Four short links: 29 May 2009

Meatware Hacks, iPhone Web Stats, Distributed Hash Tables, Richard Feynman Fun

1. Freedom for OS X -- Mac app that disables networking for up to eight hours so you can get work done without Internet distractions. Technology workarounds for meatware bugs. (via Joshua-Michèle Ross).
2. iPhone Casts a Giant Shadow on the Web -- 43% of mobile web traffic is from iPhone users, as measured by "the world's largest purveyor of ads on mobile apps and websites". As I was told today, "more people are spending more time looking at the web through one of these. For how much longer can you afford to ignore it?" (via timoreilly on Twitter)
3. Why you won't be building your killer app on a distributed hash table (Jonathan Ellis) -- locking and sophisticated queries. I'm still trying to figure out where we'll end up with these "let's do something simple in a way that lets us scale horizontally, and then build on top of that" approaches to solving the big data/graph theory problems behind many modern apps.
4. Richard Feynman Interviews at Microsoft -- a bit of fun to start the weekend on. (new URL 20090601)

Four short links: 25 May 2009

1. China is Logging On -- blogging 5x more popular in China than in USA, email 1/3 again as popular in USA as China. These figures are per-capita of Internet users, and make eye-opening reading. (via Glyn Moody)
2. The Economics of Google (Wired) -- the money graf is Google even uses auctions for internal operations, like allocating servers among its various business units. Since moving a product's storage and computation to a new data center is disruptive, engineers often put it off. "I suggested we run an auction similar to what the airlines do when they oversell a flight. They keep offering bigger vouchers until enough customers give up their seats," Varian says. "In our case, we offer more machines in exchange for moving to new servers. One group might do it for 50 new ones, another for 100, and another won't move unless we give them 300. So we give them to the lowest bidder—they get their extra capacity, and we get computation shifted to the new data center."
3. Why Washington Doesn't Get New Media -- Things eventually improved, but despite the stunning advances in communications technology, most of federal Washington has still failed to grasp the meaning of Government 2.0. Indeed, much is mired in Government 1.5. Government 1.5? That’s a term of art for the vast virtual ecosystem taking root in Washington that has set up the trappings of 2.0 — the blogs, the Facebook pages, the Twitter accounts — but lacks any intellectual heartbeat. Too many aides in official Washington are setting up blogs and social media pages because they understand that is what they are supposed to do. All the while, many are sweating the possibility that they might actually have to say something substantive or engage the public directly. It is the nature of midlevel know-nothings to grinfuck any idea that would force them to substantially change their behaviour. We incentivize this when we talk about "you must have a blog" (ok, I'll get comms to write it), or "put up a wiki for this" (ok, but there'll be no moderation so it'll be ignorable chaos). Describe the behaviour you want and not a tool that might produce it. (via timoreilly on Twitter)
4. On the Information Armageddon (Mind Hacks) -- Vaughn points out that the much-linked-to New York Magazine article on attention is a crock. I didn't like it because it was wordy and self-indulgent, Vaughn because it didn't actually cite any studies other than one which was described incorrectly. History has taught us that we worry about widespread new technology and this is usually expressed in society in terms of its negative impact on our minds and social relationships. If you're really concerned about cognitive abilities, look after your cardiovascular health (eat well and exercise), cherish your relationships, stay mentally active and experience diverse and interesting things. All of which have been shown to maintain mental function, especially as we age.

Four short links: 12 May 2009

Storage Superfluity, Data-Driven Design, Twit-Mapping, and DIY Biohacking

1. Lacie 10TB Storage -- for what used to be the price of a good computer, you can now buy 10TB of storage. Storage on sale goes for less than $100 a terabyte. This obviously promotes collecting, hoarding, packratting, and the search technology necessary to find what you've stashed away. Analogies to be drawn between McMansions full of Chinese-made crap and terabyte drive full of downloaded crap. Do we need to keep it? Are there psychological consequences to clutter? (via gizmodo)
2. In Defense of Data-Driven Design -- a thoughtful response to the "Google hates design!" hashmob formed around designer Douglas Bowman's departure from Google. When you’ve got the enormous traffic necessary to work out if miniscule changes have some minor, statistically significant effect, then sure, if you can do it quickly, why wouldn’t you? But that’s optimization that should happen at the very end of the design cycle. The cart goes after the horse. Put it the other way ‘round and you have a broken setup. It doesn’t mean horses suck. It doesn’t mean carts suck. Carts are not the enemy of horses. Optimization is not the enemy of design. Get them in the right order and you have something really useful. Get them the wrong way around and you have something broken.
3. Just Landed: Processing + Twitter + Metacarta + Hidden Data -- Jer searched Twitter for "just landed in", used Metacarta to extract the locations mentioned, and then used Processing to build visualizations.
4. Do It Yourself Genetic Sleuthing -- MIT is starting a hotbed of DIY biologists. The 23-year-old MIT graduate uses tools that fit neatly next to her shoe rack. There is a vintage thermal cycler she uses to alternately heat and cool snippets of DNA, a high-voltage power supply scored on eBay, and chemicals stored in the freezer in a box that had once held vegan "bacon" strips. Aull is on a quirky journey of self-discovery for the genetics age, seeking the footprint of a disease that can be fatal but is easily treated if identified. But her quest also raises a broader question: If hobbyists working on computers in their garages can create companies such as Apple, could genetics follow suit? It's unclear what those DIY-started "genetics" companies would look like--the potential is there, but it's yet to met the right problem. (via Andy Oram)

Just Landed - 36 Hours from blprnt on Vimeo.

When Distraction is Good

Distraction is getting a bad name.

This past month, I've been heads down on a few projects and noticing something I'd not been very conscious of before now. When I get "stuck" or when I reach a natural break point on a piece of work, the menu of potential distractions includes everything from email and telephone calls to getting food, socializing and more.

I did an informal audit. Sometimes I would check email. Other times, I would pace, get a glass of iced-tea, or walk outside for a few minutes. When I did the latter -- any activity that was quiet, reflective and receptive, I would feel refreshed. I was open to receiving an insight and to being in the moment. When I returned to the project that had momentarily stumped me, I would enjoy new energy. I started calling this receptive distraction. Receptive distraction is any sort of distraction that creates mental space.

When I went to email, however, I would "spin out." That is, I would completely lose track of what I had been working on and get immersed in all sorts of other issues. I started calling this deceptive distraction. I thought I could take a short break and crank out a few emails, but it took longer to do the emails than I thought, and longer to get back into my project afterward.

I asked friends about their experiences with receptive distraction.

Don, a retired judge, related that he had always had a shower available in his chambers. On one occasion, during a twenty-minute recess at a custody case, Don took a five-minute shower. "I let the water roll over me and let my mind go. Things that were subtle, that I'd heard but that had not sunk in -- body language and other impressions -- drifted through my mind, and surfaced. When I got out of the shower, I had a decision."

Receptive distraction. "It's like a palate cleanser," commented Walt, a journalist.

Are your distractions receptive or deceptive?

RIP: Returned Every Email

I fell in love with email in 1983. I was a computer-savvy educator and children’s librarian teaching teachers about the new technologies 
available to them. Email came into my life, offering immediate gratification: no stamp, no trip to the post office, no phone tag, no long messages. Questions were answered quickly. Personal exchanges often felt as intimate as a written letter or a phone call, but were immediate and more frequent.

Years later, in 1990, I was working at Apple, and I missed a weekend call to my mother. She chided me: “Your tombstone isn’t going to say ‘Returned every email, returned every call.’ It could say, ‘Loving daughter of…” My mother was thinking about my tombstone and I was thinking about email.

Then, between 2000-2002, when I was working for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, it wasn’t unusual for my inbox to have a thousand new emails a day. Everybody and their dog seemed to be on email. I filed, filtered, deleted, and delegated. And I called my mother on the weekends.

When I left Microsoft, my emails tapered off to 100-200 a day. In 2006, met Bruno, a mid-level manager in Silicon Valley. When I sent him an email, a message bounced back into my inbox:

“My email response time is 1-2 weeks. 

If you need immediate assistance, you can I.M. me between 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 pm PST or call me between 9:30 -11 a.m. PST.

For issues related to contracts, please contact…”

Bruno, GenY and twenty-something, named three communication tools: email, I.M., and the telephone. He spelled out his response habits. That got my attention.
Why don’t we all take a cue from Bruno? We could start a social movement. We can take back the inbox. I’ll call it eFree.

In the “signature” at the end of an email, people often include name, contact information, a quote, or a legal disclaimer. Let’s modify that. How about cutting and pasting the eFree signature below into your email signature? By adding it, you’re communicating your preferences, just like Bruno did. You’re letting the recipient know how to communicate with you.

eFree
1. Reply all is usually a bad idea. 

2. If you’re cc’d, there’s no need to reply.

3. A short, thoughtful email gets a quicker response. Long emails are read last.

4. If this issue cannot be resolved in 3 emails, consider scheduling a call or a meeting.

5. Thank you. Always lovely. Sometimes not necessary.

Are you ready to take back the inbox? Is there a funnier or more compelling way to say this? Radar readers have great suggestions, so thank you in advance!

(special thanks to Michael Tubach, an attorney with O’Melveny & Myers LLP, who helped craft the eFree principles)

This post originally appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?

One afternoon, earlier this year, as I was scanning a long list that I was adding to endlessly, I realized, I'll never get it all done. That's probably just fine. But this endless list and this feeling of being completely scheduled's not working right now.

I met some friends for dinner and put the question out: Do you have a never-ending list? Do you manage your time? Do you manage minutes, tasks, and lists? Do you start each day with a list that has more on it at the end of the day than it did at the beginning of the day, in spite of how many items are completed and crossed off?

Or do you manage your attention? Do you manage emotions, intention, and make choices about what will and will not get done? What are your favorite ways to do this?
I got such an interesting set of answers, that, these last few months, I made a point of asking a variety of people: office workers, surgeons, physicians, artists, parents, and CEOs. Here's what I've learned.

(continue reading)