Idea: "Not to Exceed" Field on Checks

Sometimes my kids will need a check for something at school, and for one reason or another, they don't know the exact amount. The solution, of course, is to make the check out but not fill in an amount. On principle, I dislike giving out any form of the proverbial "blank check". So why can't checks have a "not to exceed" field? 

Micro$soft Outlook email doesn't let you print only a range of pages!

No option to just print pages 1-2, for example. I don't know about you, but I have plenty of endless email trails where I don't want to print the whole thing, only a few pages or a selection. Just another example of how M$ doesn't improve or even fix much of anything, unless:

1. They have competitors nipping at their heels.
2. They think it will drive upgrade $.

I hold the brand in contempt, for this attitude.

Another Amazon Attaboy: Frustration-Free Packaging

I know this is hardly a news flash, the frustration-free program is at least a couple of years old, but I hadn't thought about it in a while. I know it has gotten some mixed reviews, but my point is--at least Amazon cares! This is an old problem that gets worse, not better, each year, as clamshell takes over like an invasive species. So, tip of the hat to Amazon, again.

No, I Do NOT Want Podcasts Added to My Music Collection!!!

Text of email I just sent to Google:

The Google Music app for Android suffers from the same problem ALL music apps do. Namely, it is too aggressive in automatically adding MP3s to your collection. Specifically, for those of us who are aggressive podcast listeners, we probably don't want our podcasts intermingled with our music. I mean, I love This American Life, but I really don't want it to be part of "Favorite Workout Songs", you know? 

A few ways to solve this. At a minimum, have Advanced Settings that allow the user to exclude directories from auto-discovery.

My Changing Retail Landscape

A really remarkable amount of my household expenditures goes to Amazon, and Sam's Club. Just interesting to think about how much business has migrated away from traditional outlets, in particular electronics retailers (half or more of the Amazon purchases) and grocery stores (3/4 of the Sam's purchases). Not saying it is good or bad, just interesting. (Well, actually it is good, for me as a consumer, obviously, or I woulldn't be shopping there.)

Decision Fatigue

I am just fascinated by this kind of stuff. Especially the sleep connection. I am a strong believer that adequate sleep is one of the four pillars of good health (along with diet, exercise and healthcare). With sleep, there is a big feedback loop into two of the other pillars. I have seen speculation that a factor in the obesity epidemic is lack of sleep. I connect that to the fact that I read the average adult American--in 1900, before the advent of widespread electric lighting--slept an average of 10 hours in the winter. 10 hours, can you imagine!


It also seems clear to me that there is a connection between feeling rested, and having the drive/willpower to exercise. Unless you are confirmed, "addicted" exerciser, it is hard to drag yourself to the gym, or wherever, and put yourself through the paces, when your brain is whimpering "sleep, rest".

No, I Don't Want To Leave Feedback!

In general the Amazon customer experience is simply off-the-charts great. Beyond belief. I have almost never had to call them, but I did the other night for a Kindle order on my son's phone. They have a "call me" button, and they call you. No wait!! Fluent, helpful, smart CSR, problem solved very expeditiously. Like I say, off the charts.

The one thing that irritates me are all the sellers, begging for feedback. I'm sorry, unless they do something exceptional, I'm not taking time to give feedback. Just not interested. Most laughably, I ordered a $2.38 battery, and they wanted feedback! Maybe Amazon already has an "opt me out of feedback" option, and I haven't found it yet, but it's annoying.

Negate NH, 1 Iowa and SC

I am sick of their outsize influence. How about a Facebook group to pledge never to vote for the primary candidates who over focus on those states?

Groupon Follow-Up

Going out on a limb a little bit...I'll predict that 3 years from now, Groupon will rue the day they turned down Google's $5-6 billion offer. 

ACSOI, mentioned nearly 50 times in the document, showed that Groupon made $82 million in the first quarter of the year. But ACSOI left out the hundreds of millions of dollars associated with marketing the service, acquiring other businesses, and bringing in new subscribers. So it left out very real costs of growth—not one-off investments or unusual charges, but expenditures core to the company's expanding business.

Investors noticed—and howled. The Wall Street Journal termed the filing "magic." Tech blogs declared the company a sham. Many commentators hearkened back to the worst days of the late-1990s tech bubble, when out-of-nowhere dot-coms with cloudy revenue streams got billions from IPO-hungry investors. Forbes pointed to one especially salient piece of commentary from 1998. "Certain internet CFOs are pushing investors to look at EBITDAM," Silicon Valley investor Bill Gurley wrote. "The 'M' represents marketing, and is an attempt to get Wall Street to ignore what has become the single biggest expenditure for internet startups. This only makes sense if you truly believe that marketing costs will one day go away, which should be considered unlikely. Perhaps we should make it easier and skip straight to EBE (earnings before expenses)."

Marketing of Vodka: A Case Study

I think that kids, of various ages and up through high school, need some enrichment classes related to personal finance and consumer behavior, to arm themselves against the shysters and charlatans they will encounter, on a daily basis, throughout their lives. By shysters and charlatans, I pretty much mean every company under the sun. There may be exceptions, but they are precious few.

This article about the marketing of premium vodka would make a heck of a case study.

Google+

I've spent my first 10 minutes on Google+. I have my doubts. I think the usability might be better than FB--seems like the usual Google clean-and-lean. Or maybe it is just because it is too new to have grown cluttered. But as far as achieving real success goes, I just don't see the compelling reason to use it. Just like Bing has not been able to interest me in switching away from Google search (and in that case, the switching barrier is far lower).


Like I said, Google shoulda bought LinkedIn. Since that ship has apparently sailed, I think their only other chance is to meticulously identify every single weakness in Facebook, and fix it in Google+. Even then, they will probably need FB to stumble at some point. Some things I am thinking of:

• Security. Facebook hasn't been so strong here, including lack of HTTPS and the Firesheep vulnerability.
• Channels. Circles is a good start. I think I am a somewhat typical middle-aged male techie--I think FB is Face-bore. I just don't want to know what my good friends--let alone vague acquaintances--did over the weekend. I want interesting, and I want useful. So the channels I would like to see are:

• "I need advice..."
• "I need to borrow" 

Bills that ask for CC Security Code

The CVV2 code is that little 3-digit code you usually have to provide when ordering stuff online. The PCI security rules prohibit storing it, which is a good security feature.

Lately, I have been getting some bills that can be paid by credit card, mainly from healthcare providers, that ask for the CVV2 code. While my reading of the regs indicates that this is not an actual violation (they are forbidden from storing the CVV2 once the individual transaction is authorized and completed), it still seems like a bad idea to have it written down. So I never provide it. I've never had the billing party object.

Should require re-insurance for companies that self-insure

I had a friend whose employer went bankrupt in the midst of a family member undergoing surgery. Because the employer self-insured, he got stuck with the bill when they went bankrupt. This just seems wrong to me. Maybe companies that self-insure should have to have some form of re-insurance as a backstop. Or, alternatively, healthcare providers that accept third-party payment  should indemnify their patients in the event the paying party goes bankrupt.

Only recently employed need apply

This seems cruel and wrong.

Lifetime ROI of Once-Thriving Companies that Go Bust

Just 15 years ago, Borders was growing nationwide. They were wiping out the independent booksellers. Now they are going bankrupt. That reminded me of something I have wondered about, each time I hear the story of a relatively young, successful company that goes bankrupt, or is acquired on the cheap (e.g., Borland).

That questions is--if you invested in the company from "Day 1" of its going public[1], and held your investment through bankruptcy, what would your lifetime ROI be? It seems to me it would most likely not be very good. Most high-growth companies pay little or nothing in the way of dividends. So there wouldn't be much time between no-dividend growth company, and falling star, in which you might get nice dividend payouts.
__________
[1] I want to define Day 1 in a way that factors out any IPO bubble hype. So let's say that is defined as 30 days after IPO.

Pork? Earmarks? What Do You Mean? - NYTimes.com

No surprises here, same as it ever was, but that makes that hypocrisy no less appalling. Does not a single one  of these congresspeeps aspire to the chance for greatness, by vigorously denouncing and disavowing the pork in their own backyard? It might cost them re-election, but what credibility in a run for higher office! (Not to mention just doing the right thing and being true to one's ideals.)

Complexity Is the Enemy

From my Android phone, when I click on a NYT link sent to me via email, I eventually get a "Page Not Found" response. Pretty sure this is what is happening:

1. Clicking link invokes the mobile browser.
2. Mobile browser fires up, proceeds to try to open (standard) NYT site (nyt.com).
3. NYT site sees access is from a mobile devices, and automatically substitutes their mobile site (m.nyt.com).
4. The link is different, so the result is instant linkrot-type breakage.

The 3 Dirty R-Words

In business and IT exercises, there are 3 dirty words that all begin with "R":

• Reconciliation
• Retroactive
• Reversals

Reconciliation can be tedious under the best of circumstances. The best of circumstances being situations that were expressly designed, a priori, for reconciliation (e.g., balancing your checkbook). But often we find our ourselves performing reconciliations post-hoc, where there are many factors, small and large, that make it hard to reconcile. 

Retroactivity is a problem because it just completely messes up baselines, timing and common-sense assumptions. It is also one of the things that makes reconciliation hard--those sneaky retro transactions can throw your compares off. [Date Warehouses may have very sophisticated timelining strategies, to allow reliable reporting of "as is" or "as of" (incorporates retroactivity) and "as was" (reproduce snapshot of the situation, as of a given date) states, from the same recordset.]

Reversals are a sophisticated and often complex form of logical delete. One reason they are challenging is just thinking of all the situations that require them. Then there is the question of what data has to accompany the reversal, in order to create the same state that would have existed had the transaction never happened--while still preserving a clear audit trail that the transaction did, in fact, happen. It is usually a quantity that is being reversed, but what related meta-data goes with it? And how do you make it clear that a given transaction is a reversal, while also trying to ensure that any computations or reports pull in all reversals? Reversals are one contributor to retroactivity. 

Old Rituals, Undone by Information Age

• Letters and mail-call started disappearing more than 10 years ago, with the widespread adoption of email.
• The family phone--its competition for the line, knowing who your kids are talking to--started disappearing 7-10 years ago, as it began increasingly common to get cell phones for increasingly young children.
• In my case, at least, the venerable bedside alarm clock--with its need to be set every evening--has been replaced by the multi-alarm flexibility of the phone.

I wonder how long until we don't need to carry a wallet?

Flaw in Smartphone Keyboard Auto-Correct (Don't Fix If It Ain't Broken)

Auto-complete and auto-correct can be very nice. Swiftkey for Android, in particular, can feel like it is reading your mind. However, I would propose that auto-correct should never change a word that is already a valid dictionary word. At best it gets in the way, at worst, it creates weird and occasionally embarrassing results.

Smartphone and Farsightedness: Google Maps Is *The Worst*!

I've complained before about smartphones and farsightedness. Google Maps is positively the worst offender. The street labels are tiny. Not just small (8-10pt) but tiny (4-6pt). And no matter how much you zoom the map--they stay tiny. It is awful. Of all the apps to have this problem, this is the most inopportune one.

Need Better Hyphenation

Reading is one of my major uses of a smartphone. Obviously, screen real-estate is at a premium. There is no room for waste. Thus, as noted, one feature that is crucial, but often lacking, is full-screen mode. Here's another: better hyphenation. Especially in portrait mode, a huge amount of screen real-estate is lost to whitespace, because words don't get divided.

Tablet Use Cases

I suspect #1 is watching movies. #2 may be games. My use case, reading, is probably farther down the list.

As to tablet popularity, I wonder if some of it is attributed to the resolution and beauty of the screen. I find reading on my 4" smartphone not enough words per page, but the phone's resolution is very, very nice. Now, when I use my regular monitor, I find it washed-out and grainy. The crappy screen of our family netbook is even worse.

One more thing to think about...the more a computer activity uses brain-hand interaction, the more we may be drawn to it. I don't have the links at hand, but I have read research in the past about how deeply the human hand-brain connection runs. Such articles have included some degree of finding computer interaction problematic, since it undermines that connection (I don't think mere typing "counts" as hand-brain). So maybe part of the "subliminal" appeal of tablets is stimulating that deep, ancient neural connection.

Feature Idea: Transient Twitter Subscriptions, Driven by URLs

Twitter is a great way to follow breaking details (like a weekend soccer tournament, where the games keep getting re-scheduled due to weather). But the overhead of following, then especially UN-following, is a little tedious. Like Glympse, I would like Twitter subscriptions that automatically expire.

The whole other problem is the slow uptake of Twitter in the non-techie population...we are still a few years away from widespread usage of this type. Currently, posting on Facebook is considered pretty much cutting edge. Not trying to be sarcastic, that is not a bad thing, but Twitter is ideally suited to this use case.

Don't Twist the Facts, Even in Service of Good Policy

The findings from this so-called "pragmatic trial" may change the way British doctors prescribe drugs for the prevention of asthma flares. Patients may be told that it doesn't really matter what controllers you take, although intensive clinical trials suggest otherwise. In effect, the recommendations will be dumbed down, because some (or even most) patients simply aren't very good at following directions. Even savvy patients—the ones who are perfectly able to handle the more complex and better treatments—would be treated the same as everyone else...Should patients be separated by ability groups, as some students are in schools?

I can sympathize with this viewpoint from a pragmatic financial and clinical perspective, but I have a couple of problems with it. One is personal--the dumbed-down, lowest-common-denominator, one-size-fits-all perspective sacrifices too much for those who aren't dumb. For instance, if you don't have high blood pressure and aren't salt sensitive, there may not be much reason to deny yourself the gustatory delight of salt.

The second is more a matter of philosophy, and its long-term implications for public policy. In a nutshell: in the long-run, no good comes from deceit, even deceit borne of the best intentions. People will start to figure it out, sooner or later, and that will breed distrust at best, conspiracy theories at worst.

Samsung Is on the March

I think Samsung is poised to be the a combination of the next Sony, Panasonic and maybe Maytag. In the past few months, we have purchased a Samsung smartphone, a Samsung refrigerator, and a Samsung laptop.

Lead Generation Sites

This NYT article explains a new (to me) form of internet-based scams, Lead Generation sites:

By that, the Haggler means that there actually is a guy named Bob Strom, who is a bonded locksmith. And he owns a business, which you can visit, at 7352 15th Ave NW. This might seem too obvious to note, but it sets Mr. Strom apart from more than 90 percent of his local competitors. According to Yelp, there are — no joke — nearly 3,000 locksmiths in Seattle, though with relatively rare exceptions these operations aren’t in Seattle at all. 

They are phone banks, typically set up in far-off places, often in other countries. Call them and they’ll dispatch a locksmith. Some are legitimate, but others may all too often do shoddy work and/or charge two or three times the estimate.

That is another example of why social recommendations could be very useful.

Idiom checker

Next frontier for word prcessors and text editors: an "idiom checker". Purpose, in multi-nationality work teams, to point out to writers that they may be using idioms unfamiliar to those nationalities. And also to offer right-click translations.

Hate Facebook Email

Third, Google+ conspicuously lacks its own person-to-person message system. It uses its members’ existing email accounts, which don’t need to be on Google’s Gmail system. So if you join Google+, you won’t be saddled with yet another inbox that you need to monitor, and you can reply to messages without having to go to Google+ to do so.

That is a Very Good Thing. Google is doing it this way for obvious reasons which play to their advantage, just as Facebook wanted to bypass normal email accounts, for their own advantage. However, what is good for Google, in this case, is much preferable for me. For multiple reasons, including convenience and control, I detest messaging via Facebook.

(Note: LinkedIn at least makes it easy for its messages to travel via email. If someone sends you a message via LinkedIn, and you have it configured to notify you via email, the notification email is a real email--it contains the full contents of the message, as well as your connections valid email address. So you can immediately take the conversation out of LinkedIn, into email.)

Google Shoulda Bought LinkedIn

Google is taking yet another pass at a social networking product, with Google+. I'm not really up on it, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of buzz about it (pun intended). So I have my doubts about whether it will succeed, at all.

What they should have done--instead of offering $5-6 billion for over-rated Groupon--was to buy LinkedIn. Ideally, back when I told them to, but even if they had done it around the time of LinkedIn's IPO, they might have picked it up for $7 billion or so. That would have given them a winning platform to extend.

Something I Wrote 10 Years Ago

Something I wrote 10 years ago, in a comment on the website of usability guru Jakob Nielsen's. Very interesting to look back, and see where I was way off-base (cell phone's only purpose is voice!), and the areas where I was closer to the mark (PDA size about right; battery-life concerns; desirability of minimizing wasted real estate).


Merge PDA and Phone or Keep Separate?


Erik L. Neu writes:

I am a Palm user. I have read any number of columns recently predicting the demise of the Palm/PDA in favor of cell phone internet access. I think this is ridiculous! The form-factor of the Palm, though great for what it does, is already enough of a usability challenge. I make an analogy between the Palm and a laptop. For the most part, the form factor of the laptop was established nearly a decade ago. Rather than getting smaller, they stay the same size, with more power, functionality and screen area being crammed in the same space. I think the Palm size is about right, it fits reasonably comfortably in the pocket. Now we need the useable screen to expand to fill the footprint of the machine.

As for the cell phone, it has one purpose: voice conversations. So smaller is always better. I would never want to take my Palm jogging, but I just might (usually not, but it is conceivable) want to take my cell phone with me on my run. I am amazed at how small they have gotten already. Besides not being usable, cramming PDA features in them will interfere with this design goal.

Longer-term, yes it would be nice if the cell-phone functionality can reside in the PDA. But I don't see this as being desirable with today's technology--it's not that big a hardship to carry two devices, esp. given the shrinking size of the phone. Plus, their battery-life styles are in conflict--people will be forever finding their PDA out of juice after 2 hours of phone conversation! 

Jakob's reply: Completely agree that we need to recapture the entire surface of the Palm Pilot for screen space. One of the things done right on the Pocket PC. 

I tend to prefer a single, converged device that will be both a PDA and a telephone, especially since the PDA will need to connect to the cellular network anyway in order to get live data. However, as you noted, there is also much to be said in favor of separate devices that can be optimized for their individual features.

Modern Family

Is the first mainstream sit-com that I have mildly enjoyed in, oh, about 3 decades. And I more than mildly enjoy it--I think it is very, very funny!

Android Notifications

Android gets a lot of praise for its notifications, which iOS has recently more or less copied. I'm here to tell you that Android notifications are fine in the simple case, but they have a problem when there are too many--you run out of real estate for the important ones.

Basketball Effective FG Percentage, and Other Statistical Modernizations

Backwardness offends me, especially when there is absolutely no reason or justification for it. Happens often with popular "statistics". I'm not talking about mildly complicated statistics, as might be taught in an intro stats class. I am talking about very basic numbers and metrics.

Basketball Field-Goal Percentage
The 3-point field goal has been part of mainstream basketball for about 30 years. It is an important aspect of the game. Yet the ancient statistic of field-goal percentage--originating before the 3-pointer had been dreamt of--is still the common yardstick of shooting performance. Why?! The more useful statistic would be the "effective field goal percentage", which simply weights the 3-pointer 50% more. It is SO obvious, I do it mentally whenever they flash a players 2 and 3-point stats.

GPAs
This has got to be one of the silliest traditions. Typically, grade-point averages (GPAs) are calculated using a scale where A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, with possible interpolated weights for + and - grades. With ranges for each letter: A=90-100, B=80-89, C=70-79. So let's see...students take tests, and get numerical grades. Those numerical grades are summed and averaged. That result is then placed in a rough range that translates to a letter. Then, those letters are re-translated to a GPA. Crazy stuff--lots of extra computation, all the while removing resolution! The thing that drives me crazy is that this system is universally accepted by very smart people!!!

Stock Quotes
This is a bright spot. For years, stocks were quited in binary fractions--down to sixteenths, or perhaps thirty-seconds. Ridiculous stuff, especially in the age of the digital computer. Yet it persisted. This may be a special case, because I think part of the reason it persisted was entrenched interests--brokers and dealers  benefited from the rounding. Nevertheless, at some point I think in the 1990s, the practice was eliminated. So, progress is possible!

Small Design Pattern: Status History

Where a table has a field for status lifecycle (e.g., New, In-Process, Pending, Complete, Void). You have a couple of options. One is to keep updating the Status field each time it changes. But if you want an audit trail of that  history, you can have a child table that captures each snapshot of history. It would be nice to have it one-click automated.

Arab Spring

Crime Wave in Egypt Has People Afraid, Even the Police

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK1:23 PM ET

Mounting disorder, from jailbreaks to sectarian strife to soccer riots, is causing economic and political worries in post-
revolutionary Egypt.

This kind of societal breakdown is/was one of my fears. After so many decades of repression, pent up passions exploding and chaos ensuing. I'm afraid the "Arab spring" is blooming much faster than optimal.

Never Oversleep Again

I've been using my Andoid phone as my alarm clock.

PROS:

• Nice, mellow, slowly loudening wake-up sound. Much less jarring than the buzzer on my 20-year-old alarm clock.
• Can have multiple named alarms, set in advance. Greatly lessens the chance of forgetting to set your alarm. For those easy-to-forget extra-early Monday meetings--set the alarm on Friday.
• Battery backup, of course!

CONS:

• Hard to snooze
• No visual time-check when you wake up in the middle of the night
• Small reliability risk, relative to tried-and-true alarm clock technology

Smartphones Need Bigger Standard Batteries

I predict that at some point, maybe a couple of years out, very long battery life will "suddenly" become a sought-after feature, more important than the last few millimeters of slimness.

Android Usability Glitch: Suppressing Incompatible Market Apps

The Android Market has functionality to allow apps that are incompatible with the device in question to be suppressed. In principle, that is very good functionality--don't let me install an app that at best won't work, and at worst will mess up, my phone. However, the way this is implemented creates a usability flaw. You search for something you know is in the market and don't find it. You keep searching, trying different terms and spellings, and are completely mystified.

The solution would be to display the incompatible apps, but flag them visually as incompatible. This would both cure the usability flaw, and provide the bonus benefit of helping the user develop their mental model of how things work.

Mental Toughness

Howard Wasdin, former Navy SEAL:

I can take just about anyone and make them physically strong. A lot of people showed up at [training] who were much more physically capable than I was, football players and athletes in phenomenal shape, and they were the first to quit. Mental toughness is a must to make it through training, much less through combat.

I've always believed this was the case, for this kind of hardcore work. I remember reading that the survival rate for torpedoed British merchant marines, during World War II, was higher for older men than for young, and they attributed it to their mental seasoning. It also kinds sorta supports my view of why it is perfectly okay to have proportionately less severe pushup standards, for females in the military. 

The Flaws in One-Size-Fits-All Dosing

 It is about time! I have wondered about this topic for decades! This seems so obvious a consideration! Is it due to--for lack of a better term--laziness, on the part of prescribers? Too much trouble to punch some numbers into a calculator, then round to the nearest available dosage?

A subscriber to our Health After 50 newsletter asks: I'm taller and heavier than the average person. Should I be taking a higher dose of antibiotics? ... as an editorial in The Lancet recently pointed out, a 6- foot, 198-pound male with pneumonia will likely be prescribed the same dose of antibiotics as a 5- foot, 123-pound woman. Some research suggests that one-size-fits-all dosing of antibiotics poses a distinct disadvantage for heavier people. Why? Large -- especially obese -- people have comparatively larger blood volumes than their normal-weight counterparts. Consequently, the concentration of an antibiotic in the bloodstream is lower in a large, obese individual than in a smaller one, making it harder for the antibiotic to fight infection. In fact, some experts theorize that insufficient dosing relative to body size may help explain why obese people tend to recover poorly from infections. Insufficient dosing may also push physicians to prescribe more antibiotics for longer durations, thus contributing to the alarming trend of antibiotic resistance. Ideally, antibiotics should be individualized to age, gender and liver and kidney function as well as height and weight. But clinical trials on individualized dosing have yet to be conducted. It's not clear if this would be cost effective, as drug manufacturers would also have to make changes to match individual patients' needs. For now, talk to your doctor about upping your dose if your current one isn't helping

Programmable Applliances

Yes, yes, YES! I have been after this for years.

Looking to the future, the team foresees a world where accessories can work with all Android devices, regardless of manufacturer. To that end, Google is introducing the Android Open Accessory API, which will allow universal accessory compability. While initially designed around USB, they look to Bluetooth. One example they give is having an exercise bike recognize your phone and launch a corresponding workout app automagically. Google is committed to giving developers a path to making great accessories, in a program that's completely open with no fees. Google would "like to think of your entire home as an accessory," and sees a future where your appliances communicate with you Android devices, designing an open wireless protocol to let anything electrical talk to Android.

Smartphones have majorly changed the way we deal with daily matters and these devices have even become a necessity for many of us, but there are those that simply don’t need such a strong phone and would prefer a WiFi-only device to use as a PDA/multimedia device. Finding a good “phoneless smartphone” is not an easy task right now, unless one goes for the Apple iPod Touch, of course. Last January at CES, Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy Player, finally bringing a worthy competitor to the iPod (more specifically, the iPod Touch). At last, Samsung has officially launched the Sasung Galaxy S WiFi 4.0 and 5.0 devices, which are the equivalent versions of the Galaxy players outside of the U.S.

Finally! I've believed the Android ecosystem really needs this. Though I'd keep my fingers crossed on price--it can't be any more expensive than an iPod touch, and ideally, would be cheaper.

This article pretty much nails the Trump "candidacy"

The developer has put together epic deals, but several of his companies have endured bankruptcy — the latest just two years ago — and he's a front man with just a slender stake in a significant number of the casinos and buildings that bear his name. This particular messenger is a showman at heart.

A Spare Battery for Every Smartphone

We have 4 Android phones in the family now, and they are all battery hogs. No surprise there. It usually troubles me the least, since I work from home. But while traveling on vacation, I have found it convenient to have a spare battery (which I lucked into via a warranty return). All of which leads me to propose that every Smartphone should come with a spare battery. Or, better yet, with a spare extended battery. 

Serif Fonts Acceptable on Smartphones

Serif fonts, like the Times family, look great in print, but not so great on computer monitors. That is because even very good monitors pixel density falls far short of the minimum print standard of 300 dpi. I have noticed, though, that Times looks just fine on my Vibrant smartphone, whose pixel density very closely approaches 300 dpi. I imagine the same is true of the iPad, though in a much larger form factor. I think that, almost as much as the form factor, helps explain why the iPad has been such a successful reading platform. Same for Kindle, sans color.

Macro Buttons

In our conversation, I told him that so little information could be displayed on the watch's face - there is a small, scrollable window at the top and another one at the bottom - that it seemed nearly useless. But he said it would be enough for alerts, able to notify the wearer, for example, "when you've got 4 more e-mails, 3 Facebook updates and 10 Tweets." He said buttons on the watch could be programmed to dispatch canned responses. Mr. McKinney, who is 50, said that young consumers who are unaccustomed to wearing watches would still find the MetaWatch appealing. They'd use it, he said, for purposes other than timekeeping. "I hit a button and - boom - I'm checked in at Foursquare," he offered as an example.

I started this article totally skeptical, but the one touch button, to perform certain well-defined functions is an interesting concept. I've written before about the need for a physical button to perform macro-like functions.

Florida Toll by Plate

I thought Smartpass tolling was advanced, but in Florida we experienced toll-by-plate. 

Yelp Found Moderately Useful

I've been a bit of a Yelp skeptic, but I did find it mildly useful for looking up local restaurants and the like while traveling.

Open placebo

While Sandler and Ted Kaptchuk, lead author of the irritable bowel syndrome study, say that while their so-called "open placebos" don't hinge on deception, they do employ some sleight of hand. A doctor who uses an open placebo is like a magician. The trick is performed with full disclosure that it is, in fact, a trick, but it still requires a subtle form of deception to execute. For the placebo to work, the patient must suspend disbelief at the doctor's urging. Kids in the ADHD study were told that, "the mind and body work together in interesting ways and placebos are known to work sometimes but no one knows why"

Very clever. The placebo effect is surprising, the "open placebo" effect is dumbfounding.

A Sharing Society

I really like the sentiment of this time article, "Today's Smart Choice: Don't Own. Share". In fact, I've written about this topic several times . There is also a book out: What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. (In that spirit, I have just reserved my copy from the library.)

This could be nice

Polycom teleconferencing app for the iPad...could be a step in the right direction toward robust teleconferencing software, as I have wished for.

Asus Transformer: Tablet + Keyboard

I think this is the perfect form factor. I just bought my first netbook, for my wife, because she travels to client sites during the day, and takes a lot of notes. MS Office support and good keyboard input was a must. I know you can get an aux keyboard for an iPad, but lugging those two things around and connecting them defeats the point.

I am guessing the first iteration price point will be too high. To me, a good price point would be no higher than the current iPad. Given that the competing tablets have had trouble achieving that--without the fancy transformer capability--that may be a challenge.

Outlook Communicator

We use Office Communicator at work. In typical M$ fashion, it is minimally adequate to the task, it is conveniently available and it is free, but it really is quite lacking.

I have a wide screen monitor. It offers more width than I need, most of the time. I would like to use the right-most 5" for OC. I would like it to be tabbed. I would like the newest conversation to pop to the top. Is that so much to ask for? No, of course it isn't. But with no serious competition nipping at their heels, of course M$ does nothing, nada, zero to make the product incrementally better. Blech.

Credit Cards and Traveling

How annoying. I've noticed in recent years that I get more "fraud detection" messages left on my home answering machine, when traveling and using credit cards. And I know when traveling overseas, you need to give your credit card issuer a heads-up. But during our recent vacation to the Florida Keys, our cards were flat-out denied. Not because of a big purchase, or lots of use, but the very first time we tried, for $40 in groceries.

Such a minor pain to call and get it authorized. And, for Wells Fargo at least, no way to do that on the web. Dumb.

Smartphone Marketing Idea: Attack TI Calculator Franchise

TI has a lock on the school calculator market. It's ridiculous--a big, bulky, low-res-display TI graphing calculator costs $100. The price has been stuck at the same level for years. Why? Because they are an entrenched, de facto standard. Sure, you can buy a functionally equivalent Casio for half the price, but TI is what the teachers will "support".

Because I hate all things that are over-priced, I abhor this situation. I think it might be a good angle for a smartphone vendor to attack. Provide subsidies and seed units to get your hardware and calculator softare out into the education market. Make it really good, so the teachers and students like it. Provide good support. Undermine TI before they know what hit them, and before your competitors catch on. Establish your brand as the education brand. 

Really?!

I weep for my country, that some would, even for a moment, consider Donald Trump to be presidential material.

The Problem of the Rifle

I just re-read the poem "The Highwayman"  for the first time in years, helping my sophomore daughter with it. I enjoy the poem, but I found myself wondering--exactly what is the deal with the rifle?

They had bound her up at attention, with many a sniggering jest!
They had tied a rifle beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say, 

Why specifically did the soldiers tie it beneath her breast? It is certainly instrumental to the plot that it be there:

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers! 
The tip of one finger touched it, she strove no more for the rest; Up, she stood up at attention, with the barrel beneath her breast. She would not risk their hearing, she would not strive again, For the road lay bare in the moonlight, Blank and bare in the moonlight, And the blood in her veins, in the moonlight, throbbed to her love's refrain. 

Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear; Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear? Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill, The highwayman came riding-- Riding--riding-- The redcoats looked to their priming! She stood up straight and still.  

Tlot tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot tlot, in the echoing night! Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light! Her eyes grew wide for a moment, she drew one last deep breath, Then her finger moved in the moonlight-- Her musket shattered the moonlight-- Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him--with her death. 

But it seems way too contrived. It just doesn't add work for me. The best theory I can come up with is that the soldiers thought The Highwayman would embrace her and cause the rifle to discharge. But that seems less than half-baked. Am I missing something? Because I hate to be a spoil-sport[1], but to base such a central plot element on such an illogical circumstance just undermines the whole enterprise.

(I think Noyes could have achieved the same plot effect with more plausible details...she could have tried to wrest a gun away from one of the redcoats, and been shot in the struggle.)


___________
[1] Okay, those who know me will realize that I don't actually hate being a spoil-sport in questioning things this way, it is probably more fair to say I thrive on it...

Beating the NYT Paywall

There are so many ways to defeat the NYT paywall. Some common ones are:

• Use multiple browsers, on multiple computers
• Read via aggregators
• Find the article you want, then go search for it

But I think I have just found the best one. All I have to do is add an article to my beloved Read It Later (or use Readability, pretty much the same thing), and it bypasses the limit. Oh yeah, and it also bypasses the ads! Talk about self-defeating...

I Am A Prescriptivist

Disinterested or uninterested? How long we should cling to a word's original meaning. - By Ben Yagoda - Slate Magazine

Groupon Inefficiency

But, in what seems to be an increasing number of cases, customers come for the deals and then leave for deals offered by other merchants through Groupon. So the number of "new" customers attracted by cheap prices increases, and the number of loyal customers decreases as shoppers prefer to become "new" again for whomever offers the best. deal.

'Ya think? While I am not above deals, in my quest for cheapness, I am also sick unto death of all the time, energy and attention absorbed by deal-hunting. It's the electronic equivalent of coupon clipping, totally inefficient. I really prefer everyday low prices, like Sams, Walmart and Amazon. Much more sustainable.

Wave Cuts Or Layoffs

I agree with the ideas here, at least in situations of severe recession. Interestingly, the very concept that there might be an alternative to layoffs is foreign to most people I talk to.

o it seems bosses are smart not to cut wages. It's bad for morale, which is bad for productivity. Sending out pink slips might seem similarly demoralizing, and thus bad for productivity, but layoffs have a more complicated effect on the lucky employees who hang on to their jobs. Layoffs can even boost productivity by giving workers a bit of extra motivation to prove their value, in the same way that Ford's high salaries encouraged hard work. And it might not be so crazy for workers to respond to wage cuts with suspicion—in the current recovery, corporate profits have sprung back, even as wages have stagnated. What could be more unfair, from the worker's perspective, than a cut in wages accompanied by higher profits? Yet this aversion to pay cuts isn't good for workers or the American economy more broadly. More people end up losing their jobs than if wages were more flexible, and there are serious long-term consequences for the workers who lose their monthly paychecks. The negative impact on a worker's earnings, health, and even the earning prospects of his children lasts decades beyond the pink slip's arrival. Creative solutions—like the furloughs that cut government salaries in California and elsewhere—might help to make lower pay more palatable, by presenting the cut as a temporary measure and by creating at least the illusion of a lower workload. If we can find other ways of overcoming the simmering resentment that naturally accompanies wage cuts, workers themselves will be better for it in the long run.

Vacation

Sleeping on the beach
Slathered fully in sunscreen
Hat shading my eyes

I Want to Short Groupon

At $25 billion, Groupon's valuation would top Google's $23 billion market value when it went public in August 2004.

I don't normally mess around with anything other than index mutual funds, but I would be sorely tempted to heavily short Groupon, at anything approaching that kind of valuation.

Japan's Call to Strength

Prior to the quake, Japan was a timid nation worrying about its eventual decline. People expected nothing from the nation, and the mutual help across generations and the trust in local communities was beginning to crumble.

Maybe this disaster will serve as Japan's Call to Strength. 9-11 should have been America's, so maybe we can use this event as our national wake up call, too.

The Last Trace of Vaudeville?

Normally I would equate "Street Performer" with "occasional, undesirable feature of modern urban life". But in Key West, Florida, it means something much different. We watched four different acts in Mallory Square, and they were all quite good. It made me think this must have been a lot like what Vaudeville-something I am much too young to have firsthand knowledge of-must have been like.

Apple vs Pear: Doesn't Matter?

This is the kind of "nevermind" reversal that causes so much confusion and cynicism amongst the general public. I wonder if the original belief was a correlation problem: more women are pears, and for reasons having nothing to do with body shape, of course, women have fewer heart attacks. That correlation might have confounded prior studies?

A major new analysis challenges the long-held idea that obese people who carry their extra weight mainly around the middle - those with an "apple" shape - are at greater risk for heart disease than "pears," whose fat tends to cluster on their thighs and buttocks.

Grade Point Averages

Converting a numeric test score to a letter, only to convert it back to a number in order to calculate GPA--how dumb is that?!  This is right up there with the (not so) old practice of quoting stock price in sixteenths! Seriously, doing it this way makes zero sense, but since it has always been this way, nobody questions it.

A Computer In Your Hand

Although I am an Android smartphone fan, my normal routine doesn't actually involve prolonged heavy use, since I spend most of my day in front of, or very near to, a computer. But now we are on vacation, and while we do have a netbook to share amongst the five of us, there is obviously a lot of competiton for time on it, so I am using the phone much more heavily. Verdict is pretty favorable

My phone is a Samsung Vibrant, aka Galaxy S, so a good, fast, large-display 2nd-generation Android phone. The combination of capable hardware, large screen, steadily improving OS and apps, and the wonderful SwiftKey virtual keybord, all combine to make it a very pleasant, productive experience. I have even started making shorter blog posts from the phone--not bad at all. Also,  Read It Later continues to delight. 

Apple Is The Exception That Proves The Rule

DAVE WINER: Meanwhile it's the stuff that doesn't get the hype that has a chance to go through the iterations needed to achieve market acceptance, off on the side, without millions of users showing up Day One. Almost every product we use was like that. (Recent Apple rollouts are the exceptions. Don't know how they do it. They must have quite a testing process going on behind the curtain.)

Gorilla Glass - Branding Case Study

Corning's Journey From Cookware To Gorilla Glass: http://www.npr.org/134240989

You don't often hear politicians put it this way, but he is exactly right. Instead of focusing on luring new companies, localities should focus on keeping a favorable climate for the one they already have. It's an old rule in business: it cost ten times as much to attract a new customer as it does to retain an existing one.

and while the governor wants to make sure we keep promises made to companies, she also wants to make sure we are being fair to the companies that we already have in this state."

Slugging Form of Ride-Sharing

This is a great phenomenon. I have always thought that if we could just induce half the rush hour drivers to carpoolbwith just one other person, that would instantly reduce traffic by 25%. Thanks key is the finely balanced system of rewards that the article describes for Washington DC slugging.

Longform: Beautiful, Curated Blogroll of Long Magazine Articles

A great source of material for Read It Later is Longform.org. The really nice part is that Longform has recognized this synergy, and offers specific versions of its SAVE button, that implement the Read It Later bookmarklet. So it is one-click effortless to flag an article that looks interesting, simply based on its caption. (Arts & Letters, are you listening :) ?)

As A Reading Platform, Smartphones Finally Achieve

I've complained before about the disappointing shortcomings of Android phones as a reading platform. One of the very biggest limitations was speed-of-access--article weren't cached. I am happy to say that I now consider those limitations fixed. The new Read It Later app is just terrific, and sells for the extremely reasonable price of $1. Another competitive option is the Everpaper client for Instapaper.

Both these apps meet the minimum for solid competence:

1. Offline access--very fast, and can use when you don't have data (e.g., airplane).
2. Ease of adding content.
3. Auto-formatting for mobile-friendly reading layout (very, very important)
4. Good reading client, including the very important configurable font-size.
5. Web browser bookmarklets--for flagging articles on your computer, and having them auto-synch to the reading app.
6. Good, sensible mobile configurability--lock orientation, specify when to synch.

The extra features that set Read It Later apart:

1. Auto-saves your place in the article--this is very critical.

The minor polishing that it still needs:

1. Full-screen option, to make full use of limited real-estate.
2. A scrollbar on touch, so that you don't have to swipe page after page to fast-forward or scroll back.
3. Tied in to the above, browser-style forward and back buttons.
4. Page-Up, Page-Down tied to the volume rocker switch, of course! (Or a tap-to-turn, like the Kindle app)

I Hate Carpeting

It feels good underfoot, but it harbors germs and allergens, and it deteriorates SO rapidly.

Computer/TV

I'm not so sure I'm *personally* excited by the prospect. I 100% use the DVR for all my TV-watching, thus minimizing time wasted via commercials. I have to believe any new delivery system will be very focused on trying to force you to watch commercials. The commercials may be more relevant, perhaps even shorter/fewer because of the higher value of being relevant, but they will certainly be there in numbers. Of course there is always the "analog hole" to overcome that, I suppose.

STILL not THAT tough a winter

The weather guy said "I counted 18 nights below zero, well short of the average number of 28 during an "average winter" ". And it wasn't that windy. So extra snow, but less cold.

Android Gift Cards

I totally agree with this blogger, that Android needs gift cards, I have been on this page for a while. My kids have Android phones. No expensive data plans, but just the phones. No way am I putting a credit card on their accounts (I actually trust them, but accidents happen). I know a lot of people want carrier billing, and for adults (young adults) I understand why, but that would be as bad as a credit card, for the use case in question.

I would like to get a $10 Android gift card that my kids can use for the very limited number of things they need to buy (fun $1 games). In the meantime, I hadn't thought of the Visa card, that is a very good work-around. I suppose in some ways better, for my purposes, since I can buy a gift card for $20, let my son buy his $1 game, and use the rest at Wal-Mart.

Photographic Memory

I've always been very doubtful of the existence of "photographic memory", but never read anything about it. I just happened to think about it while sitting in front of the computer, so had time for some quick research, which pretty much confirms my beliefs. From Wikipedia:

Much of the current popular controversy surrounding eidetic memory results from an over application of the term to almost any example of extraordinary memory skill. The existence of extraordinary memory skills is reasonably well-documented, and appears to result from a combination of innate skills, learned tactics, and extraordinary knowledge bases (you can remember more of what you understand than you can of meaningless or unconnected information.) Technically, though, eidetic memory means memory for a sensory event that is as accurate as if the person were still viewing, or hearing, the original object or event. Almost all claims of "eidetic memory" fall well outside this narrow definition.^{[citation needed]} A handful of recent studies have suggested that there may be a few, rare individuals who are capable of a limited amount of eidetic recall. This recall is theorized to be essentially 'unprocessed' sensory memory of raw sensory events. (i.e. "raw" images devoid of the additional (usually automatic) perceptual processing, which in normal memory inseparably attaches to the image information about the object's identity and meaning. The documented eidetic abilities, however, appear to be far more circumscribed, and far less common than popularly imagined.
Marvin Minsky, in his book The Society of Mind, was unable to verify claims of eidetic memory and considered reports of eidetic memory to be an "unfounded myth".^{[citation needed]}An example of extraordinary memory abilities being ascribed to eidetic memory comes from the popular interpretations of Adriaan de Groot's classic experiments into the ability of chess Grandmasters to memorize complex positions of chess pieces on a chess board. Initially it was found that these experts could recall surprising amounts of information, far more than non-experts, suggesting eidetic skills. However, when the experts were presented with arrangements of chess pieces that could never occur in a game, their recall was no better than the non-experts, implying that they had developed an ability to organize certain types of information, rather than possessing innate eidetic ability.

From Slate:

This seems like as good an opportunity as any to clear up the greatest enduring myth about human memory. Lots of people claim to have a photographic memory, but nobody actually does. Nobody.

Star-Tribune Premium Content

The Star-Trib is offering Premium articles now. As far as I can tell, there is nothing distinctly special about this content. I can't really blame them for trying, but I predict total failure--if the NYT can barely get people to pay to read articles, I don't think the Strib has any chance.

Grocery Chains in General, Wegman's in Particular

I am constantly surprised by the lack of consolidation in the grocery business. Within my lifetime (45 years), I personally have witnessed consolidation in one retail segment after another: video stores (down to Blockbuster + online), department stores (Wal-Mart and Target), electronics (Best Buy, general discounters and online), bookstores (Borders and B-Dalton). But there are dozens of grocery chains across the country, and for the most part they seem to be very, very regionalized. As a general principle, I don't understand why consolidation hasn't occurred. And in particular, I don't understand why Wegman's isn't marching across the country, Wal-Mart-like, to own the business.

I have no idea how Wegman's does what it does, but they seem to be magically head-and-shoulders above the competition, analogous to how much stronger Wal-Mart was than its competitors. Their stores are very, very nice, huge, with great selection. Yet they have lower-than-average prices, including many great, knockoff store brands. Their employees are friendly and happy, and their customers LOVE them. That is no exaggeration. I can understand how a niche player like Trader Joe's can achieve these things, but it is simply amazing for a full-service grocery store to manage the feat.

The only explanation I can come up with is that Wegman's is privately owned, and they simply aren't ambitious enough to become the Wal-Mart (or, if you prefer, the Costco) of groceries. Because, as my son would say, they could "own" the market, if they wanted to.

Texting While Driving

Studies also show that it can be difficult for people to ignore the ping of an incoming text or call — for  psychological and physiological reasons. People may fear missing an important call from a friend or boss, or get excited by the prospect of receiving interesting news. Physiologically, researchers say, the lure of mobile devices has addictive properties, in that people feel an adrenaline burst when a call or text comes in and get a rush when they answer.

Those are the key points. I'm not too excited about the TMobile service on its own merits--$4.99 per month is just plain greedy, and I don't think it is the ideal implementation--but as a step toward wider awareness (I posted about that a year ago), it is an important start.

Somebody Should Acquire Sony

Cingular acquired AT&T, a hallowed brand that was out of gas, and very successfully re-built their own brand around the AT&T iconography. Someone should do the same thing with Sony.

Vampire Squid: Trial Lawyers

I'm ambivalent about the extent to which Matt Taibbi's characterization of Goldman Sachs is populist excess:

The world's most powerful investment bank [Goldman Sachs] is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money

but, as this article notes, "the spirit of Taibbi's piece, if not its details, has really caught on. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal attacked Goldman Sachs as a heavily subsidized, implicitly guaranteed firm akin to Fannie Mae. They called it 'Goldie Mac'."

Now if someone would just change "Goldman Sachs" to "Trial Lawyers"...

Gallup Q20

A few years ago, Gallup seemed to have a lock on the mindshare for organization-wide, annaul internal surveys of employee attitudes. Like any good marketer, they worked hard to brand it, including affixing a catchy, eponymous name--the Gallup Q12. Part of their value proposition was the vast internal database they had accumulated, so that they could slice the data in different ways, to provide all kinds peer comparisons, for value-add. In other words, their product had a strong network effect--people chose Gallup because of their broad customer base, and that created an ever broader customer base. Even our church used it.

Somehow, though they seemed to have lost the mindshare. Maybe the value of the internal database came to be seen as less than meets the eye. I have been at several companies and organizations, and each one seems to be using a different survey vendor, none of which I have ever heard. of.

Un-Silencer App

Sometimes my wife forgets to turn the ringer volume on her phone, after silencing it for church and the like. This causes a certain amount of frustration for me and the kids. Fortunately, she has an Android phone, so there is an app for that. The un-silencer app is wired in to the "set vibrate" event, so that you don't actually have to remember to use the app--it automagically gets triggered, when you set your phone on silent/vibrate. It pops up and asks you to set a timer for when to take the phone off vibrate. Works very well.

That is the kind of thing that is SO cool with Android and iPhone--you aren't dependent on the limited ambitions of the phone manufacturer, for cool features that matter to you.

Shows recorded but never broadcast

I wonder how many Oprha, or Dr. Phil shows are recorded, but don't work out very favorably, and are consequently never broadcast?

No Good Comes from Fabrications

This is an interesting article on Simon Wiesenthal, about whom I have long heard not known very little beyond the moniker "Nazi hunter".This is the part that really interests me:

It is thus unfortunate that his fabrications and falsehoods now threaten to overshadow his real accomplishments...Wiesenthal's most egregious distortion of the historical record and Segev's response to it. In the 1970s, Wiesenthal began to refer to "eleven million victims" of the Holocaust, six million Jews and five million non-Jews, but the latter number had no basis in historical reality...When Israeli historians Yehuda Bauer and Yisrael Gutman challenged Wiesenthal on this point, he admitted that he had invented the figure of eleven million victims in order to stimulate interest in the Holocaust among non-Jews. He chose five million because it was almost, but not quite, as large as six million...Any falsification with respect to the Holocaust, whatever its purpose may be, gives comfort and solace, not to speak of ammunition, to Holocaust deniers.

I agree. You just see this strong, human tendency to spin, to twist, to fabricate and distort played out over and over. Of course contemporary pols do it all the time, but you see it often in professional life. The glib managerial response that smooths over the question in today's meeting sows confusion, distrust and cynicism when later shown unjustified.

Article: For Magazines, a Bitter Pill in iPad

Not surprising to me. They've got to bring the cost-per-issue way down. Ideally, a single-issue purchase should cost the same as the per-issue cost with a subscription. That's probably going too far for the publishers, so how about this: let people buy mini-subscriptions. Instead of the full-year price, 4-6 issues at that same discounted price. And without auto-renewal, so that there is no "poison pill" to trying the publication out.

Core Abdominal Strength

This was a good article on the heavy emphasis on "core strength". I started picking up on this obsession with "strengthening the core" about 3 years ago. Before that, I had never specifically heard of exercising "the core". Situps, yes, but no core. I thought at the time it felt a bit faddish...

Better to Exercise Consistently, For Life...

...than peak and then completely slack, as this article discusses:

Similarly, although in a more compressed time frame, a study published earlier this year found that when a group of world-class kayakers completely quit training (at the end of a competitive season), they rapidly lost strength and endurance. After only five weeks of not training, according to one measure of strength, they’d sloughed off about 9 percent of their muscular power and 11 percent of their aerobic capacity.

In other words, being almost completely inactive, whether for a short or prolonged period of time, inexorably de-tones muscles and compromises health. The benefits of regular activity don’t last long.

I've observed this phenomenon many times in my 20+ year exercising history. I'll start seeing someone at the gym every time I go, and I ask them about it, and they'll tell me they are going every day. I'm like, wow, that's great. Then all of a sudden I will stop seeing them. At all. I finally run into them outside the gym, and they sheepishly explain they got busy, or sick, or started traveling, and just stopped exercising. I try to tell them--much better to exercise 2-3 times weekly, for the rest of your life, than this kind of yo-yo routine.

When Did Ibuprofen Become the All-Purpose Exercise Recovery Drug?

More and more, I am hearing of people taking ibuprofen prophylactically, right  after a hard, but relatively routine, workout. One of the Bodypump instructors at our local Y has repeatedly recommended doing that. I have heard of other people even taking it before a workout--which this article casts some serious doubt on.

Anyway, it would never have occurred to me to do either one of those things. Maybe I am just weird, but very mild muscle soreness, the kind you get after an especially hard workout, is really not bothersome at all. It doesn't last long, and it carries a nice reminder of the virtue and pleasure of that workout. Even more significant soreness, as a fit person may get from an unaccustomed form of activity, is really not too bad.

Bright Side: Fewer Lawyers?

One other comment regarding the post below, about the dim prospects and heavy debt for recent Law School grads...in the big picture, it is a disaster that we have so many lawyers. First, because lawyers make business for themselves--litigiousness, and excessive fear of unwarranted liability. Second, though, because of the diverted talent. All those bright young minds that go into law might be making a real contribution in a useful, needed field--science, engineering, medicine, social entrepreneurialism.

Article: Is Law School a Losing Game?

Interesting long article in NYT with this title. Some choice observations:

“I think the student loans that kids leave law school with are more scandalous than payday loans,” says Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Alabama. “And because it’s so easy to get a student loan, law school tuition has grossly outpaced the rate of inflation for the last 20 years. It’s now astonishingly high.”

...

“This idea of exceptionalism — I don’t know if it’s a thing with millennials, or what,” she says, referring to the generation now in its 20s. “Even if you tell them the bottom has fallen out of the legal market, they’re all convinced that none of the bad stuff will happen to them. It’s a serious, life-altering decision, going to law school, and you’re dealing with a lot of naïve students who have never had jobs, never paid real bills.”

I think that most of what is said here, of Law School, applies at a somewhat smaller scale to an undergraduate college degree.

Rooted My Android Phone

I finally got a combination of frustration plus guts to motivate me to root my Samsung Vibrant Android phone (rooting an Android is not illegal or even unethical, it is just a "do at your own risk" activity). I was predictably visited by Murphy a few times, but not involving the actual rooting, and there was never a "have I bricked this phone?" moment.

It is running noticeably faster and more smoothly, and battery life seems much improved. Oh, did I mention I both got rid of Samsung's proprietary, utterly unnecessary TouchWiz "skin", and the long-delayed Android Froyo/2.2 update? Beyond that, I haven't done much to take advantage of root, though I do have a few things in mind.

Things I learned along the way:

• Installing from SD does not literally mean the actual, physical SD card. For whatever reason, there is also a virtual SD parition in the phones on-board memory.
• That same virtual SD can get corrupted, so make sure to back up. It gave me a confusing Windows Explorer error, and it took me a while to conclude that I needed to re-format the SD partition. Not sure how it got corrupted.
• Use Titanium Backup before you flash a custom ROM, it will save a whole lot of re-installation. Oh, and make sure to use the "and system settings" option..
• XDA Developers is am amazing resource.

Minivan Denial

To me, going to ridiculous lengths to avoid driving a minivan is the automotive equivalent of a comb-over: you look more foolish, pretending to be something you aren't (young and cool), than you would if you just accepted reality. This very sentiment, of course, it what gave us the SUV-craze.

January at the Gym: The Attack of the Resolutionaries

Amusing article, that will immediately ring true to all veteran exercisers. I think the point below captures a truth about gyms:

Humans have a need for rituals and routine. Humans in gyms display this need in a hyper-developed, 'roidy kind of way, which makes sense: The gym is the place we go to control one of the few things in life we can control (dumpiness) and so it becomes the place where we become the people who try to control everything else (diva-ness!). The gym is a microcosmic symbol for how splendidly the world could work, if only everyone would wait their turn, properly hydrate and remember to wipe down whatever they touched with a lemony Pine-Sol solution.

My own personal peeve--which does not apply exclusively to newbies--relates to waiting for machines. There is a certain body language that one needs to exhibit, to indicate that one is waiting for a machine. It needs to be subtle, so as not to inappropriately crowd the person currently on the machine (unless of course they are resting between sets, in which case they are breaking the rules and being unfair themselves, and deserve to have pressure applied--up to and including crossing the non-verbal barrier, of being asked outright "okay if I work in?"). But it needs to be clear enough to inform the sequencing decision of other patrons. It is frustrating to think you are next in line for a machine, only to have someone come flying from across the gym to claim it. There is an instinctive art that most people seem to grasp, but a few are either unconsciously or willfully oblivious to. Here is a list to help them:

Do's and Dont's:

1. Don't rest between sets. Ever. Even if the gym seems empty, discipline yourself to clear off the machine, to give others a chance to work in. Don't make them ask.
2. As a corollary, don't "guard" the machine. This involves complying with the letter of the law, by getting up off the machine, but violating its spirit, by hovering so close that another person can not gracefully access the machine.
3. Do realize that proximity is very important. You can't signify you are waiting for a machine if you are across the gym.
4. Direction is also important. You need to be generally facing the machine you want, and without staring, you need to let you glance drift toward it occasionally. 
5. Which brings up the next rule--while waiting, be aware of others. If you sense that they are trying to evaluate whether there is a wait for it, you need to give off clear signals that you are in line. But not aggressively. Your operating assumption should be that they are not competitors who must be actively deterred, but rather rule-abiding fellow exercisers of goodwill, who, like you, are merely seeking to optimize their time.
6. You absolutely can't be waiting for one machine while you are on another. Not even if they are right next to each other. (A possible exception--some gyms may try to set a priority for those who work in sequence. In my opinion, this is both undesirable--because different people have different ideas of the proper sequence--and just leads to disputes. But if it is the posted letter of the law at your gym, you should respect it.)
7. Don't exercise in packs. It isn't fair for 2-4 people to monopolize a machine by trading off sets. (Note: this probably varies with the culture of the gym, in hardcore, male-oriented facilities this may be the norm. You will know if you are in the wrong place.)

Netflix Streaming: Too Many Choices

We have been trying out Netflix streaming. In terms of performance, it has been pretty good (we are using the Wii, out of convenience). Selection--not having recent and really popular movies--is a bit of a problem, especially for the kids. Ironically, though, another problem is too much selection--there is so much to choose from that it is very, very hard to get our family group to settle on something. Frustrating. I think we will just have to take turns letting one person pick.