Amazon—yes the place you buy books from—has a cool service called the Mechanical Turk. It’s a system that enables people to complete online tasks (“HITS”) such as tagging, classifying, searching, grading, and transcribing. For example, you could pay people to do tasks such as: Grading a podcast transcription Summarizing a blog post Finding out who [...]
I love the Internet because I wake up every day and discover something cool. Today’s discovery is TrendHunter, a site that recruits people around the world to spot trends. Here are some examples: Condom testers needed in the UK—mum’s the word or shaken, not stirred? Portraits made of chewing gum—giving a whole new meaning to [...]
More TED Talks are now online—though not the ones from this year. The last time I blogged about TED Talks, I made that claim that Majora Carter was as good as Steve Jobs and that created a controversy. One of my favorites is Richard St. John’s. It’s from 2005, but it’s still highly relevant. He [...]
On the day that Apple announced the iPhone, my eleven-year-old son decided that he wanted one. Since then he’s done chores above-and-beyond the call of duty in order to earn $500 to buy one. Fast forward to last week when this news appeared in the business press: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn [...]
This is the MP3 version (52,715K) of the CommunityNext founders panel in case you want to listen, as opposed to watch, it. Also, you’ll probably find this presentation by Threadless to be quite interesting. This Chicago-based online retailer solicits t-shirt designs from its community and then sells them. Rumor has it that the company’s sales [...]
Adrian G. White, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, produced a “world map of happiness.” The study reflects data from UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR. The twenty happiest countries are: Denmark Switzerland Austria Iceland The Bahamas Finland Sweden Bhutan Brunei [...]
Many people have asked me how I made the trip to Québec blog entry, so here’s an explanation. I used three products: iPhoto Comic Life Skitch I don’t think one can use this style of blogging too often, but it is effective and fun for “special occasions.” All three products, by the way, are Macintosh-only [...]
Continuing on from Minnesota, I went to Québec for the Garage Canada conference. The Winter Carnival was also going on at the same time. I thought Minnesota was cold, but it was downright balmy compared to Québec. Despite the -40 degree weather, I found many parallels between Québec and my native states of Hawaii and [...]
There are very few products that I depend on more than SpinVox. This service translates voicemail to text and then sends a text message to your phone and/or an email to your computer. SpinVox is currently introducing this service to the US. As an introductory offer, the first 250 people can get the service for [...]
I’m on a trip to my new adopted state, Minnesota. (Perhaps I am a Minnesotan trapped in a Hawaiian body instead of Canadian trapped in a Hawaiian body.) The first order of business was playing in the U. S. Pond Hockey Championships put on by Haberman and Associates. It featured approximately 200 teams playing on [...]
A little known story: When I was writing Selling the Dream—How to Promote Your Product, Company, or Idea—and Make a Difference Using Everyday Evangelism, I attended the Billy Graham School of Evangelism to learn from the best. It was a very interesting experience. Some of the finest speakers that I’ve seen (and tried to copy) [...]
Jajah will provide free global phone service between consumers in eighty countries on Christmas Day. Registered Jajah users will be able to make free calls, conference calls, scheduled calls, and text messages to anyone in the eighty countries even if the recipients are not in registered Jajah users. For example, families can use Jajah to [...]
For the longest time, the only United Kingdom company that I wished was in the United States was Wagamama because I love noodles. (Alas, it’s finally coming to Boston, but I go to London more often than Boston.) My list of UK-envy companies has doubled because SpinVox gave me an account. This company’s service converts [...]
Woz and I did a one-on one-chat for the Commonwealth Club on November 16, 2006 as part of his iWoz book tour. (Click here to watch a video of it) It was one of the most enjoyable gigs that I’ve ever done. After the event, I compiled this list of the “Top Ten Things I [...]
Inspired by The Amateur Gourmet’s truffles-centric adventure, I present to you a “comic” based on a recent trip to Phoenix, Arizona. I was there to speak to the Outlook Leadership conference for convenience-store retailers. This was created with Comic Life from Plasq. While I was there, I asked my hockey buddy, Prof. Steven Strasler, if [...]
You have to check out this posting on The Amateur Gourmet. It’s one of the best blog postings I’ve ever seen. (Thank you Leslie Carol Roberts for telling me about it.) Here are other examples of photo storytelling that shows the power of the medium: First Annual Zombie Walk in Atlanta, GA Never Let Go...
Steve O’Hear traveled to America in 2004 with two friends in order to document life in Silicon Valley. The end result is a DVD that he’s selling called In Search of the Valley. It contains interviews of people like John Warnock (Adobe), Andy Hertzfeld (Macintosh programming whiz), Woz, Craig Newmark (Craig’s List) Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly [...]
My buddies at FilmLoop are about to announce a Halloween photo story contest. To enter, click here. The prize is $500 of party supplies so that you can have a good time as you scare the shiitake out of people with your costume. FilmLoop released a new version so that you can add “bling” such [...]
The Woz XM radio show “Guest DJ On A Segway” starts airing this week on Channel 15, The Village: Tuesday - Noon ET to 4:30 PM ET Friday - Midnight ET to 4:30 AM ET Saturday - 6:00 PM ET to 10:30 PM ET Monday - 3:00 AM ET to 7:30 AM ET Woz will [...]
I may be one of the last people on the planet to hear about this experiment, but just in case I’m not, read on. Dr. Sugata Mitra conducted an experiment in 1999 in which he placed a computer connected to the Internet in a slum wall in New Delhi. He allowed children to use this [...]