Coffee competition in Seattle

This story appeared in Google News today. Apparently, the competition amongst coffee shops is heating up in Seattle, home of Starbucks. The winners appear to be those who serve wearing a minimal uniform, i.e. showing more skin. Is it really better service? On the Net: Cowgirls espresso Sweetspot cafe Moka girls

Don't be alarmed

if the page doesn't fill in immediately. The posting of all the pictures of the 2000 bloggers takes a little time to load. It does not display properly in Internet Explorer but does display very well in Firefox. I'll keep this dated out a bit to keep the reminder handy. Feel free to scroll on down and read the current items. Thanks for coming by to visit! Technorati Tags: 2000Bloggers, z-list, IE7, Firefox powered by performancing firefox

Handles

Handles Originally uploaded by shersteve. Kids can get an early start with these jungle gyms. Do you have a good handle on what you want to do?

10,000 plus context plus care

From This is Your Brain on Music, The Science of Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin I find this quote worthy: The ten thousand hours theory is consistent with what we know about how the brain learns. Learning requires assimilation and consolidation of information in neural tissue. The more experiences we have with something, the stronger the memory/learning trace for that experience becomes. Although people differ in how long it takes them to consolidate information neurally, it remains true that increased practice leads to a greater number of neural traces, which can contribute to create a stronger memory representation. This is true whether you subscribe to the multiple-trace theory or any number of variants of theories in the neuroanatomy of memory. The strength of a memory is related to how many times the original stimulus has been experienced. Memory strength is also a function of how much we care about the experience. Neurochemical tags associated with memories mark them for importance, and we tend to code as important things that carry with them a lot of emotion, either positive or negative. I tell my students that if they want to do well on a test, they have to really care about the material as they study it. Caring may, in part, account for some of the differences we see in how quickly people acquire new skills. So if you want to be an expert, you need to care about what you want to be an expert in!

Broken or Lazy?

skype_70125 Originally uploaded by shersteve. Since we are in January, reading that it ended December 31st, one would immediately consider the just past date. But then the next sentence reads "After December 31st...calls will be charged..." so do they mean this coming year? They did use the future tense or did they just get lazy and leave off 2006? What do you think?

Human rights # 2 - discrimination

Human rights public service announcements continued Human rights #2 From Youth for Human Rights International

Human Right #1 - We are all born equal

What are human rights? The United Nations organization, Youth for Human Rights has a series of 30 public service announcements on the human rights. Here is #1 Thought provoking. Action inspiring.

Big Bird and Oscar

Who gave his first puppet show at 6 years old? Who has played the same 8' 2" yellow feathered character for 36 years? Caroll Spinney, better recognized as Big Bird and even as Oscar, the Grouch... two of Sesame Streets well known characters. Isn't it nice to do something you love all your life? Read more about Caroll in the article from today's Boston Globe. (free registration may be required)

Convergence

Check out Seth Godin's vision of Web 4.0 (yes, he goes right by 2.0 to 4.0!) where he says: I'm booked on a flight from Toledo to Seattle. It's canceled. My phone knows that I'm on the flight, knows that it's canceled and knows what flights I should consider instead. It uses semantic data but it also has permission to interrupt me and tell me about it. Much more important, it knows what my colleagues are doing in response to this event and tells me. 'Follow me' gets a lot easier. Google watches what I search. It watches what other people like me search. Every day, it shows me things I ought to be searching for that I'm not. And it introduces me to people who are searching for what I'm searching for. then jump on over to see and participate in the discussion on audio via print books where Tim asks: Let me just say, I am enjoying the Audio book. I have never listened to an entire book before. This is a new experience for me. But in the process, I am a little frustrated with a few things: As I listen to the book, I hear something interesting or profound and want to capture it. Unfortunately, I'm driving. With a book, as I'm reading, I can underline important portions that I want to remember. or the discussion on whether video will replace writing where Rosa asks: The way I see it, video significantly adds to our choices – just as podcasting does – but as a near-total replacement to writing? I don’t think so. Easy and convenient is not necessarily best. What do you think?

Hugh says it well

from Hugh writing at gapingvoid: 24. You think A-Listers are arrogant bastards? You should meet the B-List. 25. There is no A-List. If you think there is, you've missed the whole point. 26. There is an A-List. Fuck with us and we'll have you destroyed like stray dogs. 27. The best way to raise you profile in the blogosphere [besides writing good stuff] is to attend the various conferences; the more, the merrier. I am [at least] fifty times more likely to link to you if I've already met you in real life. The other good way is to attend the geek dinners. 28. I wish I were better at linking to other people. The list of people I should have linked to, but haven't, would fill a phone book. 29. Sixty million blogs. Sixty million business models. 30. Yes, the blogosphere is a great place to get laid. No, I'm not telling you how I found this out. 31. If you ever forget your manners, you will pay, and quickly. 32. You are not carving in stone. You die, the blog dies. 33. It's tempting to think that people read your blog. Sadly, they don't. They skim them. So always make your content skim-friendly. Write it with "skimmabilty" baked-in. Read the full posting to obtain the full import of his blogging. Technorati Tags: gapingvoid, blogging, powered by performancing firefox

10 Best Intranets 2007 - Jakob Nielsen

The weekly AlertBox arrived today. Jakob runs through the top 10 intranet sites. Full of good insights, practical information... stuff you should be able to use easily. For the full report and to sign up for your own email with the AlertBox, click through here.

Tragedy by design

The news article in the Globe today tells of a 15 year old boy killed at the Mansfield train station by an Acela train traveling over 100 miles per hour. The hue and cry over the tragedy is covered. I won't repeat those details here. You can click through to read the full story for yourself. I would pose that the real tragedy is in the design of the station to begin with. I have had some opportunity to travel from Mansfield and it is one of those typically found in this area. Frustrating in that the long way is the only approved (i.e. safe way). First case in point, look at the picture at the top of the article. (If you haven't already clicked through, sorry but you should at this point. I'll wait for you to come back). The fence dividing the inbound and outbound tracks is only about 4 foot high. Tall enough for one of the investigators to comfortably rest against it. The fence is secure and reinforced (likely to help keep its form during the snowy winters that are normally here). There are signs on it periodically alerting of danger, do not cross. But I think this is where the design fails. If the fence was truly not to be climbed, it would be 10-15 foot tall. Most healthy folks can scale this fence. A 15 year old would hardly stop to think about it. Put a bigger fence there, then that changes the options. You would need to consider taking the long way around. It is a long way around (Globe graphic). You need to walk along one side towards RT 106, to go down the stairway and under the tracks to the other side. Certainly not an intuitive move. Certainly not as the "crow flies". The speed of the train would be less of a factor if the station were built to focus on moving people and not focused on moving trains. We would all be safer.

So what about

those Patriots! Way to go. I'll admit the Chargers had some of the better personnel on the field today but they failed to execute. The Patriots were better prepared to execute and that comes from the top! Shottenheimer's record winning the big won? Zero. Only 5 wins in 18 post season games. how did the Chargers lose? They forgot to use their MVP running back and tried to win with a rookie quarterback. those IBM commercials? I hope those characters are supposed to be working for the company that will turn to IBM for help. Seems to me like they were IBMers. I was about as confused as they were concerned. that FOX mechanical football transformer that waste screen space? cute first time, doesn't do anything different the zillionth time. best commercial? whatever beer it was with the rubber floor 2nd best? the horse football game with the zebra doing the review of the play 3rd best? show tell where the kid brought the snow ball into school absolute worst? the ads for the movie three hundred... how did this post come to be? watched way too much pro football playoff games this weekend... convinced myself (yet again) that not watching during the regular season is a good move. I can think of any number of things to do that would better spent time than watching that regularly. Technorati Tags: commercials, Partiots, tv powered by performancing firefox

Podcast Collection

This is the collection of podcasts I have created thus far. January 2007 How to read this page November 2006 The JJL Anthem Today's IPO - How I blog October 2006 What comes next (for Joyful Jubilant Learning) Orange numbers (poetry) Fire Circle Story September 2006 Podcamp Boston Recap Evolutionary Blogging Technorati Tags: podcasts, learning, podcamp, Jouful jubilant learning powered by performancing firefox

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

This amazing table comes via Seth Godin via David at boingboing. Follow this link. View the table. Take your time, scroll around. Read the popup information for each entry. This was a good deal of work, and look what a presence it creates. This was also posted at Joyful Jubilant Learning Technorati Tags: periodic table, Seth Godin, BoingBoing, visualization powered by performancing firefox

Steve Hockneyized

Steve Hockneyized Originally uploaded by shersteve. Play. Learn. Live. In a digital day, it is so easy to try and do over. This is cool. Nothing like a little change in perspective!

Performancing while waiting for Qumana

Friends amongst the Joyful Jubilant Learning group spoke highly of the Performancing add-on for Firefox so I am giving it a try. My preference had been to use Qumana but once I went to the new Blogger, it was forced to the sidelines as it doesn't work with that platform. (Never mind that the 3.0 version dropped some features (like colored text) that worked so well in the 2.0 version.) Anyway, I am giving Performancing a workout tonight. I posted to JJL successfully. Only thing I couldn't do was define the categories for the post. Since I also forgot to put my tag line in, I went into TypePad directly to fix the posting. My backup plan was to copy the colored and edit text from Performancing to Qumana and use that to post to JJL. I did copy the text over and it seemed like it would work. We'll see how Performancing does with Blogger. Any tips or tricks with Performancing that you have come across worth sharing? Updated: after posting twice to Blogger, I don't like how the line feeds are handled. It was creating too much white space (wasted space) in the postings. I ended up going into Blogger to fix the spacing. Don't want to continue to do that, that defeats the purpose of using a tool like Performancing. powered by performancing firefox

Technical options

Good overview of the options for handling old, or replaced technology. You can donate it, sell it, or trade it. Scott Kirsner writes about these options (including links) in Sunday's Boston Globe (free registration may be required).

Unsanitary?

The cover reads "Sanitary Sewer". Does that mean there is also an "Unsanitary" one somewhere? Just wondering...

She got a good mentor

While on the topic of mentors, Andrea Ross is on her way with a good one: It's 9 p.m. on a school night and 15-year-old Franklin native Andrea Ross only got home at 7:30 from a sports conditioning class. She's fighting a cold, her voice sounds scratchy, and she has several hours of homework ahead. Still, the young performer is happy to talk about her burgeoning other life -- as Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's protege. He's not calling her that, nor is she. But over the last two years, Lloyd Webber, the creator of such mega hits as "Jesus Christ Superstar," "Evita," "Cats," and "The Phantom of the Opera," has taken a special interest in the young singer who made a splash in Boston musicals, and he has quietly taken steps to further her career. Under Lloyd Webber's supervision, Ross has completed her debut CD, "Moon River," which will be released in England on March 5 . The Noble and Greenough sophomore will leave for London in two weeks for a Jan. 23 media showcase that will officially launch the CD, and she'll spend three weeks traveling around England doing media interviews. Like any young performer, she's also got a new website, andreaross.com , to promote the album. Snippets of the songs, and the first entry in Ross's blog, are included. Read the full story in today's Boston Globe (free registration maybe required). Who would you choose for a mentor?

count down to Lulu Blooker

The Lulu Blooker Prize is the world's first literary prize devoted to "blooks"—books based on websites such as blogs and webcomics. Remember, entries must be POSTMARKED no later than Monday, January 15 Check out the details on the Prize Page.

Gartner says: BLOGGING IS SO OVER

Did you see the article that caught my eye? Headlines blare that "Blogging is so over" per Gartner none the less. Go ahead, follow the link to read for yourself. I'll wait for you to come back and read what else I have to say. Waiting. Waiting. Patiently waiting. Okay, you're back now! Here we go again. Does Gartner really believe it's peaking when the demographic for blogging is basically the world? "We make it for a lot of reasons," Plummer said. "If you look at the stats on the Web, you'll see there is a life span of three months and declining on the active Weblogs out there." He said the vast majority of bloggers are coming through on their way out, as opposed to being consistent contributors. Even MySpace.com and Facebook are losing visitors, he said. "As people get out there, there is a huge explosion of submissions to these communities and blogs, and then they taper off. They realize they've gotta live a life." I don't buy this. In my cruising of the internet, I do find lots of s*p*a*m or auto created blogs. These clutter and inflate the stats and I believe lead to the analysis that Gartner ends up making. I'll go do some numbers but in the course of the time the Hitchhiker Team has been on the trail, only a small group of blogs highlighted there have gone off line. This is purely based upon my recollection of what was done and periodic check backs (digging into the archives). Now, of course, this is only a small sample of the entire blogosphere but I think is still a worthy sample. I'll get the numbers and come back. In the mean time, what do you think? Is Gartner correct?

Roller coast ride service

Go to the company web site, find what you are looking for, find you can get it shipped to the local store and pick it up there for FREE. They have the item I was looking for so what could go wrong with this? Processed the order on-line. Received the email acknowledging the order. Received the email announcing the shipment to the store. Received the email announcing the arrival and readiness for pick up at the store today. Stopped by the store tonight and they can't find it. Come back tomorrow. I'll check with the boss in the morning and see what he says. Ah, yes. I'll come back after calling first to confirm that it is indeed there and that more than one person knows about it. Duh! Stay tuned for the next chapter in this developing saga.

Could this be me?

Your results: You are Superman Superman 95% Supergirl 70% Spider-Man 65% The Flash 65% Green Lantern 50% Robin 47% Wonder Woman 45% Hulk 45% Batman 40% Iron Man 35% Catwoman 5% You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others. Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

Happy New Year 2007