Insight into things that matter… namely survival and reproduction :)
March 30th, 2008 Yashar
I just picked up the April 2008 edition of the Report on Business in the Global and Mail and found an interesting article about self-control inside. It is about a MIT post-grad student who created a company called StickK which allows you to use the power of money as a punishment to procrastination. The idea was inspired by his own quest to lose weight where he and a colleague bet half their annual income towards who could lose the most weight.
Here are some worth-while excerpts from the article:
“A dozen years, ago Florida-based psychologies Roy Baumeister started a series of experiments on self-control. A typical one went like this: Hungry subjects were presented with a bowl of radishes and a plate of freshly baked cookies. Baumesiter instructed some of the subjects to help themselves to as many cookies as they wanted; the rest were told they could only nibble on the radishes. After a while, each subject was given a series of geometric puzzles to solve not knowing, of course, that they were unsolvable.
The point was to measure how long they’d keep at it before giving up. The radish-nibblers, it turned out, caved quicker than the cookie-eaters. In fact, Baumeister’s experiments consistently found that subjects who were forced to exercise self-control were the first to quit when faced with a new challenge. They were also more likely to indulge in something else.”
“…Scientists have recently used fMRI scans to study the brains of people trying to decide between different types of rewards–say, receiving $10 today versus $20 a month from now. What they found is that short-term rewards tend to excite the midbrain dopamine system. In effect, we get high just from contemplating a short-term reward. Longer-term decisions on the other hand, are generally handled by the brain’s more logical prefrontal cortex. In the battle between the two, the dopamine system will nearly always win. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense; Over millions of years, our ancestors learned that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and it served them well. Then again they didn’t have to plan for retirement.”
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March 24th, 2008 Yashar
For my 21st birthday my roommates in California bought me the book “Never Eat Alone” by Keith Ferrazi. The book is basically about the importance of networking. Before I got passed the first 20 pages of the book my brother snagged it from me and I haven’t been able to get it back from him since, however to show you how great of a book this is, in just the first 20 pages I was inspired by the following pieces of wisdom:
- “Poverty, I realized, wasn’t only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people that could help you make more of yourself.”
- “Business is a human enterprise, driven and determined by people.”
- “Real networking is about finding ways to make other people successful. It was about working hard to give people more than you get.”
- “I’ll sum up the key to success in one word: generosity.”
- “He thought of relationships as finite, like a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces. Take a piece away, and there was that much less for him. I knew, however, that relationships are more like muscles - the more you work them the stronger they become.”
- “It’s better to give before you receive.”
- “Contribute. It’s like Miracle-Gro for networks. Give your time, money and expertise to growing your community of friends.”
- “The more specific you are about what you want to do, the easier it becomes to develop a strategy to accomplish it.”
- “No one becomes an astronaut by accident.”
- “A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
I can’t wait to finish reading this book.
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March 23rd, 2008 Yashar
At an information session held by Yahoo! on campus two weeks back I learned that PHP was created by a UW student Rasmus Lerdorf. Considering I use the language alot it was motivating and interesting to find this out. Rasmus is now a Infrastructure Architecture Engineer at Yahoo! and part of the reason they gave us this factoid. Yahoo! does use PHP for the majority of its web scripting.
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March 23rd, 2008 Yashar
A friend of mine interested in robotics showed me this video. It’s a very realistic dog-like robot built in partnership with the U.S. Defense budget which makes it even scarier. All we need now is a couple of ballistic missiles on this puppy.
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww
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March 22nd, 2008 Yashar
Last week, in another over-capacity filled lecture room, Larry Smith, probably the most sought after professor at the University of Waterloo, gave another high impact lecture on the importance of planning our careers.
Having been a student of Larry’s back in second year and seeking countless hours of business advice from him I knew I would learn a lot from this lecture of his and made an extra effort to attend. Unfortunately, the previous week he had given another lecture on the topic of “How the World Will Try and Stop You and Your Idea” which I was unable to attend. Thankfully however, the video of this lecture was made available to us and you can enjoy it as well http://www.laurelcentre.ca/lectures_larrysmith.html.
Larry’s lecture on career success covered a wide range of topics. He began by telling us how he was tired of hearing from too many alumni about how unhappy they were with their jobs. The problem with these alumni wasn’t that they weren’t getting paid enough or didn’t have interesting work. Their main problem was that they didn’t have a life. They were overworked and while they were mostly paid in the six figures they barely had a chance to start families and enjoy their hard earned money.
What was Larry’s advice to us, the next generation on avoiding this?
It was to go back to using our brains and differentiate our skills from everyone else. The perfect example being himself. As a business consultant he’s paid to think on behalf of CEO’s who didn’t have enough time to do the thinking themselves. When one student asked if an MBA would help, he replied only if it was to advance a specific part of our careers. To get an MBA for the sake of getting an MBA would slightly differentiate us from others but wouldn’t be applicable if there wasn’t a particle problem it would help us solve. He gave the example of an alumni who used the skills he learned in his MBA to penetrate a new market sector for the company he was working for and secure relationships within that sector. He said there was no way the company this alumni was working for would over work him because he had planted himself firmly as the connector in that business relationship.
Another way to differentiate ourselves? Stop using Google. Larry mentioned how Google is not even close to being the best place to find answers. It doesn’t have access to copyright material and it’s what everyone is using. Going back to the basics, such as research publications, newspapers, magazines and books where the valuable, reliable information is held would help us find more innovative solutions to workplace problems. He gave the example of “Factiva” a Dow Jones database of copyrighted information which we pay for through our tuitions yet barely any students use. I personally had never heard of this database until this lecture and found some valuable information searching it afterwards.
Basically, what I gathered from this lecture was that Larry was trying to drive the point which I had come across a few months back on my previous work term in The Economist magazine:
“Far from being simply some missing factor in the growth equation, innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy—accounting for more than half of the economic growth in America and Britain. In short, it is innovation—more than the application of capital or labor—that makes the world go round.”
– The Economist (Sept. 19, 2002)
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March 12th, 2008 Yashar
I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Between our multiple end of term projects, four year design project and handling of multiple clients it has been difficult to find the time to write a quality post. However, don’t be alarmed, there will many more posts coming shortly….with all this non-stop busy time, I’ve learned too much I’d love to share.
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March 4th, 2008 Yashar
I came across this interesting term “Moral Hazard” that I thought I would share. I think Wikipedia sums it up best:
“Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act less carefully than it otherwise would, leaving another party to bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions. For example, an individual with insurance against automobile theft may be less vigilant about locking his car, because the negative consequences of automobile theft are (partially) borne by the insurance company.”
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March 4th, 2008 Yashar
Probably the biggest Web 2.0 buzzword of 2008 thus far and maybe even 2007 has been “Social Networking”. Most of you are probably already part of communities like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Orkut, etc. However what amazes me about my recent findings is how many other forms and variations of social networks exist.
Wikipedia has a list of many of these Social Networks and it’s interesting what concepts people have been trying to build social networks around (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites). There’s niche specific social networks like BlackPlanet for AfricanAmericans, there’s device specific (mobile applications) social networks and many other forms.
The question is, with soo many social networks out there is there any room for others in the market? I believe there is, however entrepreneurs need to think outside the box, specifically the laptop and desktop machine to see where the opportunities lie.
As some of you may know, Google is working on entering the mobile market. They’ve developed a mobile OS called Android (http://code.google.com/android/) and back in 2007 we heard the now confirmed rumors that they are developing a mobile phone all their own. To encourage development on the new Android platform Google has also started the “Android Developer Challenge” (http://code.google.com/android/adc.html) and will dish out cash prices and rewards to those who develop engaging applications, and one area of focus their interested in is social networking.
Yahoo is also getting in on the mix and announced this year their “oneConnect” mobile service that promises to be a one-stop-shop for messaging and social applications so you don’t have to worry about fetching your updates from each one of them separately.
So with all this social networking activity coming from the big dogs how can you fit in? From what I see there’s many great new tools out there for developers such as OpenSocial, SocialGraph, various APIs, Widget and others to create new appealing niche specific applications from.
Or maybe as mentioned above it’s time to think beyond the laptop and the desktop computer. Maybe the opportunity lies in the GPS system in your car, or maybe in the new electronic displays in malls. Wherever it may be don’t be afraid to challenge the existing norms of society and build a more social globe.
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