Author: Simon
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National Geographic: Swarm Behaviour
National Geographic’s Swarm Behaviour is a thoroughly interesting article on insect behaviour. It discusses how research into insect behaviour is leading to new techniques in problem-solving, management, and artificial intelligence. It even could shed light on humans and our behaviour. “A honeybee never sees the big picture any more than you or I do,” says…
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Benjamin Zander: In contribution, there is no better!
I feel indebted to Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen for introducing me to Benjamin Zander, or at least the following video of him talking to music students: Link: YouTube – Benjamin Zander Speech Preview Zander is the British-born conductor of the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, clearly an incredible presence on stage, and apparently now a big…
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Windows Vista – how to inspire confidence
Spotted in a Tottenham Court Road tech store window last month, it’s a laptop running Vista. But what’s that box in the right-hand corner? Should we wait until service pack 1?
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Web facilitates wisdom of crowds: Gerry McGovern
As every week, Gerry McGovern provides food for thought, this time on the wisdom of crowds. In Web facilitates wisdom of crowds he says: The Web is not about crowd-think, but rather about amalgamating and sifting the results of many people’s independent opinions on particular subjects. This approach is the essence of Google’s success-the more…
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Artistic Composition – Eyetracking and Training
One of these days I’ll get my hands onto some eye tracking tools! Cognitive Daily: Artists look different discusses research into the differences between the way trained artists and ordinary folks view images. As someone who works daily with architects, structural engineers, graphic designers and architectural photographers, I’d love to see how their eye…
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iPhone: Where are the games?
I know everyone’s talking about the iPhone and, hey, I’m no exception. This is the first product in a long time that has drawn real attention from technology fans across the spectrum (i.e. dedicated PC nuts), and it’s been interesting to see a lot of the initial excitement fade as the reality of Apple’s business…
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Ten things I want from my phone
Tim O’Reilly starts an interesting, if tech-heavy, discussion in Ten Things I Want From My Phone. In January I’ll be looking for my eighth phone in 11 years, in which time I’ve only owned three PCs (discounting upgrades) and have become a little sick of the rigmarole of installations and buying extra kit. Universal connectors…
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The Rules of Marketing
One, don’t piss off your customer. Two, make them feel valuable. Three, give them more than they could possibly want. Four, be consistent. Okay, I don’t know the rules of marketing, but take a look at the offerings from MarketingProfs that accumulated in my inbox this afternoon. I imagine Sharon and Shelley fighting it out…
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LoveFilm’s “New and Improved” Rental Queue – the last straw?
When my DVD rental firm LoveFilm (www.lovefilm.com) told me they were improving my DVD rental queue, I was delighted. Now, I fear I will get a worse service, and a worse experience. I’ve been using them for two years now, and generally have been pleased. A while back they seemed utterly incapable of sending anything…
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SerendipitRSS: Icon Analysis and Revision Control
A delightful, but freaky coincidence between A List Apart and Boxes and Arrows this morning. So I’ve popped a couple of pages from their RSS feeds into Firefox tabs, I’ve been staring at this image of spacially frequency-filtered icons, and trying to imagine how the techniques could be of use to me. Then I flick…
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