http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/02/accidental-find-may-lead-to-a-cure-for-baldness-2/
Science is full of stories in which great discoveries are made by accident: The discovery of radiation, the discovery of the universe's shape through x-ray detection, and... the cure for hair loss?
Maybe.
At the time they returned to the cages to find that their bald mice had miraculously grown their hair back, the scientists at UCLA had no intention of curing baldness. Originally, theirs was in fact a study aimed at reducing the harmful effects of chronic stress. The unanticipated side effect of their treatment could prove a boon to balding men and women everywhere, not to mention to the drug company that delivers the cure to them.
Stress is beneficial in small doses, heightening our ability to run away from predators or to concentrate while taking an exam. But chronic stress can bring about an array of mental or physical disorders such as high blood pressure, anxiety disorders, rheumatic deseases, muscle pain, a weakened immune system and neurodegenerative diseases. Chronic stress also causes our hair to fall out.
The UCLA team was investigating the role of corticotropin-releasing factor in the stress. CRF is one of a number of hormones that mediate the body's stress response. Secreted from the hypothalamus, CRF acts at various sites in the brain and other parts of the body to mediate the stress response. In the gut, CRF stimulates a colonic stress response that include motility, defecation, and diarrhea. But animal models of high anxiety show that elevated CRF can exacerbate irritable bowel syndrome. Trying to find a way to block these effects, Tache's team employed a mouse genetically altered to produce abnormally high levels of CRF. These mice always lost their hair, initially a side effect of little importance to the researchers. In an effort to allay the harmful effects of elevated CRF Tache's team injected the CRF-overexpressing mice with CRF blockers. They injected the mice once a day for five days then put them back in their cages. Three months later they returned to the cages to find that the once-bald mice had grown their hair back. Surprised, the researchers actually thought that someone had mixed up the mice. But going back to the records confirmed that these were indeed the same CRF-overexpressing mice. So then they reported the experiment and again turned bald mice into mice with backs of lush, full hair convincing to the touch, ready to step out into the field with a newly found confidence. The effect was fast, too.
2011年4月8日金曜日
2011年4月7日木曜日
Even happier
Week1 On Being Grateful
Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough conducted a series of studies in which they asked participants to write down on a daily basis at least five things, major or minor, for which they were grateful. Participants' responses included everything from their parents to the Rolling Stones, from waking up in the morning to God. It turns out that putting aside a minute or two every day to express gratitude for one's life has far-reaching consequences. Compared with the control group, the grateful group not only became more appreciative of life in general but also enjoyed higher level of well-being and positive emotions: they felt happier, more determined, more energetic, and more optimistic. They were also more generous and more likely to offer support to others. Finally, those who expressed gratitude also slept better, exercised more, and experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness.
I have been doing this exercise daily since September 19, 1999 (three years before Emmons and McCullough published their findings), when I heard Oprah tell her viewers to do it -- and so I did! From around the time my son David turned three, we have been doing a variation of this exercise together. Every night I ask him, "What was fun for you today?" and then he asks me the same question. my wife and I regularly remind ourselves what we are grateful for in each other and in our relationship.
When we make a habit of gratitude, we no longer require a special event to make us happy. We become more aware of good things that happen to us during the day, as we anticipate putting them on our list. The gratitude list can include the name of a person you care about, something that you appreciate that you or someone else did, or an insight that you had as a result of writing in this journal.
Week 2 Rituals
There is much research suggesting that change - learning new tricks, introducing a new behavior, replacing old habits, -- is extremely hard. Most attempts at change, whether by individuals or organizations, fail. In their book The Power of full engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz provide a different way of thinking about change: they suggest that instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline as a means toward change, we need to introduce rituals.
Initiating a ritual is often difficult, but maintaining it is relatively easy. Top athletes have rituals:They know that at specific hours during each day they are on the field, then in the gym, and then they stretch. For most of us, brushing our teeth at least twice a day is a ritual and therefore does not require special powers of discipline. We need to take same approach toward any change we want to introduce.
According to Loehr and Schwartz, "Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at very specific times - motivated by deeply held values." For athletes, being a top performer is a deeply held value, and therefore they create rituals around training;for most people, cleanliness is a deeply held value, and therefore they create the ritual of brushing their teeth.
If we hold our personal happiness as a value and want to become happier, then we need to form rituals around that too.
Psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough conducted a series of studies in which they asked participants to write down on a daily basis at least five things, major or minor, for which they were grateful. Participants' responses included everything from their parents to the Rolling Stones, from waking up in the morning to God. It turns out that putting aside a minute or two every day to express gratitude for one's life has far-reaching consequences. Compared with the control group, the grateful group not only became more appreciative of life in general but also enjoyed higher level of well-being and positive emotions: they felt happier, more determined, more energetic, and more optimistic. They were also more generous and more likely to offer support to others. Finally, those who expressed gratitude also slept better, exercised more, and experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness.
I have been doing this exercise daily since September 19, 1999 (three years before Emmons and McCullough published their findings), when I heard Oprah tell her viewers to do it -- and so I did! From around the time my son David turned three, we have been doing a variation of this exercise together. Every night I ask him, "What was fun for you today?" and then he asks me the same question. my wife and I regularly remind ourselves what we are grateful for in each other and in our relationship.
When we make a habit of gratitude, we no longer require a special event to make us happy. We become more aware of good things that happen to us during the day, as we anticipate putting them on our list. The gratitude list can include the name of a person you care about, something that you appreciate that you or someone else did, or an insight that you had as a result of writing in this journal.
Week 2 Rituals
There is much research suggesting that change - learning new tricks, introducing a new behavior, replacing old habits, -- is extremely hard. Most attempts at change, whether by individuals or organizations, fail. In their book The Power of full engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz provide a different way of thinking about change: they suggest that instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline as a means toward change, we need to introduce rituals.
Initiating a ritual is often difficult, but maintaining it is relatively easy. Top athletes have rituals:They know that at specific hours during each day they are on the field, then in the gym, and then they stretch. For most of us, brushing our teeth at least twice a day is a ritual and therefore does not require special powers of discipline. We need to take same approach toward any change we want to introduce.
According to Loehr and Schwartz, "Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at very specific times - motivated by deeply held values." For athletes, being a top performer is a deeply held value, and therefore they create rituals around training;for most people, cleanliness is a deeply held value, and therefore they create the ritual of brushing their teeth.
If we hold our personal happiness as a value and want to become happier, then we need to form rituals around that too.
2011年4月6日水曜日
The Sleepless Elite
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576242701752957910.html
For a small group of people perhaps just 1% TO 3% OF the population, sleep is a waste of time.
Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.
They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic, and ambitious, according to the new researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there. "There aren't nearly as many as there are people who think they're short sleepers," says Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the Unviersity of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group.
Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To date, only a handful of small studies have looked at short sleepers - in part because they're hard to find. They rarely go to sleep clinics and don't think they have a disorder.
A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhabitions. "These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life," says Dr.Buysse. He was on the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits.One survey dubbed "Attitude for Life" that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls.
There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans.
"My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health," says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. "Everybody can use more walking hours, even if you just watch movies."
Dr. Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and a daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight.
Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too.
News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recuruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common.
Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep pattern at home. Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they are not true short sleepers, he says.
To date, Dr Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism(They're thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually rises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks. "They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again," Dr Jones says.
Some short sleepers say their sleep patterns go back to childhood and some see the same patterns starting in their own kids, such as giving up naps by age 2. As adults, they gravitate to different fields, but whether they do, they do full bore, Dr. Jones says.
"Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," "There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don't understand."
Drs. Jones and Fu stress that there is no genetic test for short sleeping. Ultimately, they expect to find that many different genes play a role, which may in turn reveal more about the complex systems that regulate sleep in humans.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci were too busy to sleep much, according to historical accounts. Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison came close but they were also fond of taking naps, which may disqualify them as true short sleepers.
Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. "If I could find a way to do it, I'd never sleep," says Dave Hatter, a software developer in Fort Wright, Ky. He typically sleeps just four to five hours a night, up from two to three hours a few years ago.
"It's crazy, but it works for me," says Eleanor Hoffman, an overnight administrator at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who would rather spend afternoons playing mahjong with friends than sleep anymore than four hours. Sometimes she calls her cousin, Linda Cohen, in Pittsburgh about 4 a.m., since she knows she'll be wide awake as well just like they were as kids.
"I come to life about 11 at night," says Mrs. Cohen, who owns a chain of toy stores with her husband and gets up early in the morning with ease. "If I went to bed earlier, I'd feel like half my life was missing."
For a small group of people perhaps just 1% TO 3% OF the population, sleep is a waste of time.
Natural "short sleepers," as they're officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine.
They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic, and ambitious, according to the new researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families.
While it's unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once.
Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there. "There aren't nearly as many as there are people who think they're short sleepers," says Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the Unviersity of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group.
Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To date, only a handful of small studies have looked at short sleepers - in part because they're hard to find. They rarely go to sleep clinics and don't think they have a disorder.
A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhabitions. "These people talk fast. They never stop. They're always on the up side of life," says Dr.Buysse. He was on the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits.One survey dubbed "Attitude for Life" that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls.
There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans.
"My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health," says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. "Everybody can use more walking hours, even if you just watch movies."
Dr. Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and a daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight.
Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too.
News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recuruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common.
Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep pattern at home. Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they are not true short sleepers, he says.
To date, Dr Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism(They're thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually rises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks. "They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again," Dr Jones says.
Some short sleepers say their sleep patterns go back to childhood and some see the same patterns starting in their own kids, such as giving up naps by age 2. As adults, they gravitate to different fields, but whether they do, they do full bore, Dr. Jones says.
"Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they've been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep," "There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don't understand."
Drs. Jones and Fu stress that there is no genetic test for short sleeping. Ultimately, they expect to find that many different genes play a role, which may in turn reveal more about the complex systems that regulate sleep in humans.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci were too busy to sleep much, according to historical accounts. Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison came close but they were also fond of taking naps, which may disqualify them as true short sleepers.
Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. "If I could find a way to do it, I'd never sleep," says Dave Hatter, a software developer in Fort Wright, Ky. He typically sleeps just four to five hours a night, up from two to three hours a few years ago.
"It's crazy, but it works for me," says Eleanor Hoffman, an overnight administrator at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who would rather spend afternoons playing mahjong with friends than sleep anymore than four hours. Sometimes she calls her cousin, Linda Cohen, in Pittsburgh about 4 a.m., since she knows she'll be wide awake as well just like they were as kids.
"I come to life about 11 at night," says Mrs. Cohen, who owns a chain of toy stores with her husband and gets up early in the morning with ease. "If I went to bed earlier, I'd feel like half my life was missing."
2011年4月2日土曜日
Are we spending too much?
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2011/01/31/are-we-spending-too-much/
Americans are, once again, no longer letting their meager incomes get in the way of a good trip to the mall. Consumer spending rose 0.7% in the last month of 2010. That was not only a bigger than expected jump in spending, but it was more than double the 0.3% rise in the month before. But here's the problem: The income of the average American only rose 0.4%. That means our spending rose nearly twice as fast as income. So are Americans digging themselves back into the debt hole that started the financial crisis, and is this a risk for the economic recovery? Perhaps not, at least not yer. Here's why:
In the past few months, a number of economists and commentators have worried that American consumers were too quickly returning to their spending ways. Here's what the blog had to say about it:
When the recession began, I expected the saving rate to rise to 8% or more. With a rising saving rate, consumption growth would be below income growth. But that 8% rate was just a guess. It is possible the saving rate has peaked, or it might rise a little further, but either way most of the adjustment has already happened.
And a few weeks ago in a post about surprisingly strong retail sales in December, I quotad credit card expert, who had this to say:
My concern is that people have the false notion that when the economy recovers they will be able to return to the levels of consumption they had before the recession, says Papadimitriou. There's just no way to fund that anymore.
But my look at the personal consumption and income numbers today makes me a little less certain that overspending is a real problem, at least right now. First of all, historically, for the past 20 years, the gap between income growth and consumption growth has averaged 0.015 percentage points. Meaning we typically spend more than we earn. The 0.3 percentage point faster growth in concemption in December is much larger than average, but its not really an outlier. We have regularly had months where the spending gap has been that large or larger. In fact, it is common for there to be a spending gap during recession because of the drop in income. Back June 2009, the spending gap was 1.5 percentage points. In January 2005, the spending gap was 2.4 percentage points.
What's more, the amount of money we are laying out in personal interest payments has dropped. In December, Americans spent a total of $185 billion servicing non-mortgage debt.That's down from $274 billion in late 2007. That's not necessarily because we have become more responsible and paying off our debt. Much of the drop is probably from lower interest rates (though credit card rated don't tend to fluctuate that much) and banks writing off credit card debt. But the net result is the same: The American consumer's debt burden has dropped. The $185 billion that was paid in personal debt payments works out to an average of $593 per person that we are shelling to service their non-mortgage debts per month, namely credit cards and auto loans. That's down from over $900 in late 2007. More importantly, as a percentage of income, we are spending far less on debt payments than we usually do. During the past 20 years, we have, on average, spent about 7.5% of our monthly income on paying off or just paying interest on our credit cards and auto loanst. In December, just 4.6% of our income went to non-housing debt. Back in the early 1990s, these debt payments were close to 10% of our monthly income.
Lastly, spending is good for the economy, particularly now. So the rise in spending will likely boost the economy, and jump kick job and income growth. Factor all that in, and it looks to me like fears that Americans are again spending too much are either unfounded or very premature.
Americans are, once again, no longer letting their meager incomes get in the way of a good trip to the mall. Consumer spending rose 0.7% in the last month of 2010. That was not only a bigger than expected jump in spending, but it was more than double the 0.3% rise in the month before. But here's the problem: The income of the average American only rose 0.4%. That means our spending rose nearly twice as fast as income. So are Americans digging themselves back into the debt hole that started the financial crisis, and is this a risk for the economic recovery? Perhaps not, at least not yer. Here's why:
In the past few months, a number of economists and commentators have worried that American consumers were too quickly returning to their spending ways. Here's what the blog had to say about it:
When the recession began, I expected the saving rate to rise to 8% or more. With a rising saving rate, consumption growth would be below income growth. But that 8% rate was just a guess. It is possible the saving rate has peaked, or it might rise a little further, but either way most of the adjustment has already happened.
And a few weeks ago in a post about surprisingly strong retail sales in December, I quotad credit card expert, who had this to say:
My concern is that people have the false notion that when the economy recovers they will be able to return to the levels of consumption they had before the recession, says Papadimitriou. There's just no way to fund that anymore.
But my look at the personal consumption and income numbers today makes me a little less certain that overspending is a real problem, at least right now. First of all, historically, for the past 20 years, the gap between income growth and consumption growth has averaged 0.015 percentage points. Meaning we typically spend more than we earn. The 0.3 percentage point faster growth in concemption in December is much larger than average, but its not really an outlier. We have regularly had months where the spending gap has been that large or larger. In fact, it is common for there to be a spending gap during recession because of the drop in income. Back June 2009, the spending gap was 1.5 percentage points. In January 2005, the spending gap was 2.4 percentage points.
What's more, the amount of money we are laying out in personal interest payments has dropped. In December, Americans spent a total of $185 billion servicing non-mortgage debt.That's down from $274 billion in late 2007. That's not necessarily because we have become more responsible and paying off our debt. Much of the drop is probably from lower interest rates (though credit card rated don't tend to fluctuate that much) and banks writing off credit card debt. But the net result is the same: The American consumer's debt burden has dropped. The $185 billion that was paid in personal debt payments works out to an average of $593 per person that we are shelling to service their non-mortgage debts per month, namely credit cards and auto loans. That's down from over $900 in late 2007. More importantly, as a percentage of income, we are spending far less on debt payments than we usually do. During the past 20 years, we have, on average, spent about 7.5% of our monthly income on paying off or just paying interest on our credit cards and auto loanst. In December, just 4.6% of our income went to non-housing debt. Back in the early 1990s, these debt payments were close to 10% of our monthly income.
Lastly, spending is good for the economy, particularly now. So the rise in spending will likely boost the economy, and jump kick job and income growth. Factor all that in, and it looks to me like fears that Americans are again spending too much are either unfounded or very premature.
2011年4月1日金曜日
Why people love repetitive brand names?
http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/19/mad-mad-men-men-the-lure-of-repetitive-brand-names/
No one ever presented that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exists? To the list of ridiculous reasons we often buy ridiculous things, add one more: sometimes we just like the sound of product's name particularly if it contains repetitive syllables.
Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you're trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all at least until the produce peddlers wised up - and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian tooth fish. Drugs companies learned the moniker trick long ago, which is how we wound up with so many drunkenly happy-sounding prescription meds like Wellburtin, Lunesta and Celebrex.
But sometimes the appeal of a name is found in something more primal than the imagery it conjures up; sometimes it's just in the way our brains respond to rhythm. In a new study in the Journal of Marketing, sought to test the appeal of repetitive sounds in brand names and came up with an inventive method.
She and her colleagues gave a group of volunteers two samples of what they said were two different brands of ice cream but which were actually the same. The researcher made up similar brand names for each, taking care to include repetitive syllables in one but not the other - "Zanozan" and "Zanovum", for example. The researchers repeated the experiment with five other types of similarly named products, including cell phone plans.
Repeatedly, the subjects in the study chose the products with the repetitive rhythm in their names - but there were exceptions to the rule. If the name included unnatural or uncommon linguistic sounds -"Ranthfanth" for example - people rejected it. "You can't derive too much from our language," says Argo, "otherwise it will backfire on you."
Similarly, the rhythm rule worked much less reliably if neither the experimenters nor the subjects said the name out loud, but instead just read it silently. Clearly, there is auditory input at play in how the brain reacts, though Argo has not yet studied that aspect of the phenomenon specifically. Even before she does, however, she believes the lesson for marketers is simple: pick the right name and say it a lot.
I would say that TV and radio advertisements are critical to this strategy, " But the employees are also crucial. Before customers order, a server can remind them of the name of the restaurant.Sales people can talk with customers and mention the brand name.
If you think company reps are doing that already, you're right. The fact that you hear "Welcome to Applebee's" and "Thank you for choosing Continental," over and over again is no accident; nor are on-screen ads for, say, AMC Loews Theater when you're in your seat, eating your popcorn and have clearly made your ticket-buying decision already.
Studies like Argo's will likely make this drumbeat of brand names only louder and steadier. The upside: if marketers heed her advice about rhythm, the best will at least have more bounce.
No one ever presented that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exists? To the list of ridiculous reasons we often buy ridiculous things, add one more: sometimes we just like the sound of product's name particularly if it contains repetitive syllables.
Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you're trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all at least until the produce peddlers wised up - and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian tooth fish. Drugs companies learned the moniker trick long ago, which is how we wound up with so many drunkenly happy-sounding prescription meds like Wellburtin, Lunesta and Celebrex.
But sometimes the appeal of a name is found in something more primal than the imagery it conjures up; sometimes it's just in the way our brains respond to rhythm. In a new study in the Journal of Marketing, sought to test the appeal of repetitive sounds in brand names and came up with an inventive method.
She and her colleagues gave a group of volunteers two samples of what they said were two different brands of ice cream but which were actually the same. The researcher made up similar brand names for each, taking care to include repetitive syllables in one but not the other - "Zanozan" and "Zanovum", for example. The researchers repeated the experiment with five other types of similarly named products, including cell phone plans.
Repeatedly, the subjects in the study chose the products with the repetitive rhythm in their names - but there were exceptions to the rule. If the name included unnatural or uncommon linguistic sounds -"Ranthfanth" for example - people rejected it. "You can't derive too much from our language," says Argo, "otherwise it will backfire on you."
Similarly, the rhythm rule worked much less reliably if neither the experimenters nor the subjects said the name out loud, but instead just read it silently. Clearly, there is auditory input at play in how the brain reacts, though Argo has not yet studied that aspect of the phenomenon specifically. Even before she does, however, she believes the lesson for marketers is simple: pick the right name and say it a lot.
I would say that TV and radio advertisements are critical to this strategy, " But the employees are also crucial. Before customers order, a server can remind them of the name of the restaurant.Sales people can talk with customers and mention the brand name.
If you think company reps are doing that already, you're right. The fact that you hear "Welcome to Applebee's" and "Thank you for choosing Continental," over and over again is no accident; nor are on-screen ads for, say, AMC Loews Theater when you're in your seat, eating your popcorn and have clearly made your ticket-buying decision already.
Studies like Argo's will likely make this drumbeat of brand names only louder and steadier. The upside: if marketers heed her advice about rhythm, the best will at least have more bounce.
2011年3月30日水曜日
Lessons on cyberbullying: Is Rebecca Black a Victim? Experts Weigh In
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/18/lessons-on-cyberbullying-is-rebecca-black-a-victim-experts-weigh-in/
It may be Friday, but it's doubtful that 13-year-old Internet sensation Rebecca Black is excitedly singing about wanting to party in her car right now.
Ever since the music video for her song "Friday" hit YouTube, Black as well as her questionable vocal abilities and songwriting chops (even though she didn't write the song) has been the subject of much online vitriol.
Unfortunately, Black inadvertently added fuel to the media flame on Thursday when she linked her recent experiences to those of victims of cyberbullying.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream media hellfire, parodies and remixes that greeted "Friday" as the video became nearly ubiquitous across Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Time.com called the song which provides a primer on the days of the week, innocently celebrates partying, and ponders the merits of "kickin' it" in a car's front versus the back seat from a wholesome teen girl P.O.V. "a whole new level of bad" and "a train wreck" . Slate proclaimed "Friday" "disastrous" while yahoo asked straight up, "Is YouTube sensation Rebecca Black's Friday'the worst song ever?
It may be Friday, but it's doubtful that 13-year-old Internet sensation Rebecca Black is excitedly singing about wanting to party in her car right now.
Ever since the music video for her song "Friday" hit YouTube, Black as well as her questionable vocal abilities and songwriting chops (even though she didn't write the song) has been the subject of much online vitriol.
Unfortunately, Black inadvertently added fuel to the media flame on Thursday when she linked her recent experiences to those of victims of cyberbullying.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream media hellfire, parodies and remixes that greeted "Friday" as the video became nearly ubiquitous across Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Time.com called the song which provides a primer on the days of the week, innocently celebrates partying, and ponders the merits of "kickin' it" in a car's front versus the back seat from a wholesome teen girl P.O.V. "a whole new level of bad" and "a train wreck" . Slate proclaimed "Friday" "disastrous" while yahoo asked straight up, "Is YouTube sensation Rebecca Black's Friday'the worst song ever?
2011年3月24日木曜日
Why some people will pay $2000 For a date
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2059625,00.html
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
2011年3月23日水曜日
Do people really make life dicisions based on their names_
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/21/do-people-really-make-life-decisions-based-on-their-names/
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
2011年3月22日火曜日
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
WSJ
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
2011年2月21日月曜日
Bother Me, I'm Thinking
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703584804576144192132144506.html#printMode
We live in a time that worships attention. When we need to work, we force ourselves to focus, to stare straight ahead at he computer screen. There's a Starbucks on seemingly every corner -caffeine makes it easier to concentrate and when coffee isn't enough, we chug Red Bull.
In fact, the ability to payattention is considered such an essential life skill that the lack of it has become a widespread medical problem. Nearly 10% of American children are now diagnosed with atention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)
In recent years, however, scientists have begun to outline the surprising benefits of not paying attention. Sometimes, too much focus can backfire; all the caffeine gets in the way. For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between day dreaming and creativity- people who daydream more are also better at generating new ideas. Other studies have found that employees are more productive when they're allowed to engage in "Internet leisure browsing" and that people unable to concentrate due to severe brain damage actually score above average on various problem-solving tasks.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Memphis and the University of Michigan extends this theme. The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields. from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair. In every domain, students who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder achieved more: Their inability to focus turned out to be a creative advantage.
And this lesson doesn't just apply to people with a full-fledged idsorder. a few years ago, scientists at the university of Toronto and Harvard gave a short mental test to 86 Harvard undergraduate. The test was designed to measure their ability to ignore irrevant stimuli, such as the air-conditioner humming in the background or the conversation taking place nearby. This skill is typically seen as an essential component of productivity, since it keeps people from getting distracted by extraneous information.
Here's where the data get interesting: those undergrads who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as "eminent creative achievers" based on their previous accomplishments. (The association was particularly strong among distractible students with high IQs)
According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousne..Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn't help but be open-minded.
Such lapses in attention turn out to be a crucial creative skill. When we're faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution - that first idea we focus on is probably wrong. At such moments, it often helps to consider far-fetched possibilities, to approach the task from an unconventional perspective. and this is why distraction is helpful: people unable to focus are more likely to consider information that might seem irrevant but will later inspire the breakthrough. when we don't know where to look, we need to look everywhere.
This doesn't mean, of course, that attention isn't an important mental skill, or that attention-deficit disorders aren't a serious problem. THere's clearly nothing advantageous about struggling in the classroom, or not being able to follow instructions.(It's also worth pointing out that these studies all involve college students, which doesn't tell us anything about those kids with ADHD who fail to graduate from high schoo. Distraction might be a cognitive luxury that not everyone can afford)
Nevetheless, this new research demonstrate that, for a certain segment of the population , distractibility can actually be a net positive. Although we think that more attention can solve everything that the best strategy is always a strict focus fueled by triple espressos that's not the case. Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is surf the Web and eaversdrop on that conversation next door.
We live in a time that worships attention. When we need to work, we force ourselves to focus, to stare straight ahead at he computer screen. There's a Starbucks on seemingly every corner -caffeine makes it easier to concentrate and when coffee isn't enough, we chug Red Bull.
In fact, the ability to payattention is considered such an essential life skill that the lack of it has become a widespread medical problem. Nearly 10% of American children are now diagnosed with atention-deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)
In recent years, however, scientists have begun to outline the surprising benefits of not paying attention. Sometimes, too much focus can backfire; all the caffeine gets in the way. For instance, researchers have found a surprising link between day dreaming and creativity- people who daydream more are also better at generating new ideas. Other studies have found that employees are more productive when they're allowed to engage in "Internet leisure browsing" and that people unable to concentrate due to severe brain damage actually score above average on various problem-solving tasks.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Memphis and the University of Michigan extends this theme. The scientists measured the success of 60 undergraduates in various fields. from the visual arts to science. They asked the students if they'd ever won a prize at a juried art show or been honored at a science fair. In every domain, students who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder achieved more: Their inability to focus turned out to be a creative advantage.
And this lesson doesn't just apply to people with a full-fledged idsorder. a few years ago, scientists at the university of Toronto and Harvard gave a short mental test to 86 Harvard undergraduate. The test was designed to measure their ability to ignore irrevant stimuli, such as the air-conditioner humming in the background or the conversation taking place nearby. This skill is typically seen as an essential component of productivity, since it keeps people from getting distracted by extraneous information.
Here's where the data get interesting: those undergrads who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as "eminent creative achievers" based on their previous accomplishments. (The association was particularly strong among distractible students with high IQs)
According to the scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousne..Because these people struggled to filter the world, they ended up letting everything in. They couldn't help but be open-minded.
Such lapses in attention turn out to be a crucial creative skill. When we're faced with a difficult problem, the most obvious solution - that first idea we focus on is probably wrong. At such moments, it often helps to consider far-fetched possibilities, to approach the task from an unconventional perspective. and this is why distraction is helpful: people unable to focus are more likely to consider information that might seem irrevant but will later inspire the breakthrough. when we don't know where to look, we need to look everywhere.
This doesn't mean, of course, that attention isn't an important mental skill, or that attention-deficit disorders aren't a serious problem. THere's clearly nothing advantageous about struggling in the classroom, or not being able to follow instructions.(It's also worth pointing out that these studies all involve college students, which doesn't tell us anything about those kids with ADHD who fail to graduate from high schoo. Distraction might be a cognitive luxury that not everyone can afford)
Nevetheless, this new research demonstrate that, for a certain segment of the population , distractibility can actually be a net positive. Although we think that more attention can solve everything that the best strategy is always a strict focus fueled by triple espressos that's not the case. Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is surf the Web and eaversdrop on that conversation next door.
2011年2月16日水曜日
2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal 1/5
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2048138,00.html
On Feb. 15, 1965 a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeard as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and tha panelists they included a comedian and former Miss America had tu guess what it was.
On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blase about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs.Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif, whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. to see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial inteliggence.
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. when that happens, humanity our bodies, our minds, our civilization will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this mooment is not only inevitable but imminent. according to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster that is , the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.
True? True.
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might concevably come a moment when they are capable of something compratbale to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they creat consciousness not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethcal decisions , appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer.It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which(with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are alot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciouseness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about hte future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.
On Feb. 15, 1965 a diffident but self-possessed high school student named Raymond Kurzweil appeard as a guest on a game show called I've Got a Secret. He was introduced by the host, Steve Allen, then he played a short musical composition on a piano. The idea was that Kurzweil was hiding an unusual fact and tha panelists they included a comedian and former Miss America had tu guess what it was.
On the show, the beauty queen did a good job of grilling Kurzweil, but the comedian got the win: the music was composed by a computer. Kurzweil got $200.
Kurzweil then demonstrated the computer, which he built himself a desk-size affair with loudly clacking relays, hooked up to a typewriter. The panelists were pretty blase about it; they were more impressed by Kurzweil's age than by anything he'd actually done. They were ready to move on to Mrs.Chester Loney of Rough and Ready, Calif, whose secret was that she'd been President Lyndon Johnson's first-grade teacher.
But Kurzweil would spend much of the rest of his career working out what his demonstration meant. Creating a work of art is one of those activities we reserve for humans and humans only. It's an act of self-expression; you're not supposed to be able to do it if you don't have a self. to see creativity, the exclusive domain of humans, usurped by a computer built by a 17-year-old is to watch a line blur that cannot be unblurred, the line between organic intelligence and artificial inteliggence.
That was Kurzweil's real secret, and back in 1965 nobody guessed it Maybe not even him, not yet. But now, 46 years later, Kurzweil believes that we're approaching a moment when computers will become intelligent, and not just intelligent but more intelligent than humans. when that happens, humanity our bodies, our minds, our civilization will be completely and irreversibly transformed. He believes that this mooment is not only inevitable but imminent. according to his calculations, the end of human civilization as we know it is about 35 years away.
Computers are getting faster. Everybody knows that. Also, computers are getting faster faster that is , the rate at which they're getting faster is increasing.
True? True.
So if computers are getting so much faster, so incredibly fast, there might concevably come a moment when they are capable of something compratbale to human intelligence. Artificial intelligence. All that horsepower could be put in the service of emulating whatever it is our brains are doing when they creat consciousness not just doing arithmetic very quickly or composing piano music but also driving cars, writing books, making ethcal decisions , appreciating fancy paintings, making witty observations at cocktail parties.
If you can swallow that idea, and Kurzweil and a lot of other very smart people can, then all bets are off. From that point on, there's no reason to think computers would stop getting more powerful. They would keep on developing until they were far more intelligent than we are. Their rate of development would also continue to increase, because they would take over their own development from their slower-thinking human creators. Imagine a computer scientist that was itself a super-intelligent computer.It would work incredibly quickly. It could draw on huge amounts of data effortlessly. It wouldn't even take breaks to play Farmville.
Probably. It's impossible to predict the behavior of these smarter-than-human intelligences with which(with whom?) we might one day share the planet, because if you could, you'd be as smart as they would be. But there are alot of theories about it. Maybe we'll merge with them to become super-intelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we'll scan our consciouseness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011. This transformation has a name: the Singularity.
The difficult thing to keep sight of when you're talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn't, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It's not a fringe idea; it's a serious hypothesis about hte future of life on Earth. There's an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it's an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.
2011年2月5日土曜日
How Your Name May Cost You at the Mall
Looking to sell some of that stuff from your garage, fast? Call the Zimmermans.
According to a new study, people whose surnames start with letters late in the alphabet may be the fastest to buy. What could possibly explain this weird phenomenon, which the study authors dubbed "the last -name effect"? The research didn't provide a definitive reason, but the authors offer an intriguing theory. Since America's obsession with alphabetical order often forces the Z's to the back of the line in childhood, they suffer.They were always the last to get lunch in the cafeteria --sorry, Young , the other kids bought all the chocolate milk again-- and had to beg for the teacher's attention from the back of the classroom. So later in life, when the Z's -- and even onetime Z's who became A's through marriage see an item they really like for sale or are offered a deal, they jump on it, afraid that supplies won't last. The chocolate milk is finally in front of them. So they grab it.
"For years, simply because of your name, you've received inequitable treatment," says Kurt Carlson , an assistant professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and a co-author of the papre, which is to be published in the Journal of Consumer research. " So when you get to exercise control, you seize on opportunity. It's a coping strategy, and over time it becomes a natural way to respond"
Carlson and Jacqueline Conard an assistant professor at the Massey Graduate school of business at belmont Univ uncoveered the last-name effect through four different experiments. In the first one, MBA students received offers via e-mail for four free tickets to a women's basketball game but were told the overall supply was limited. The average response time for people with names beginning with one of the last nine letters of the alphabet, T through Z was 19.38 minutes. Those with names starting with one of the first nine letters, A through I, replied in 25.08 minutes a statestically significant diferences.
For the second experiment, 280 adults with an average age of 39.1 responded to an e-mail invitation to fill out an online survey. In exchange, they were told, they had a 1 in 500 chance of winning $500 in a drawing. (In fact, since only 280 people responded, the odds were much better.) Again, people with surnames closer to the end of the alphabet responded faster to the offer. The results didn't idffer by gender, and the researchers also found that people whose current surnames were at the beggining of the alphabet but whose childhood surnames had been closer to the end also responded to the offer more quickly. In other words, Zimmermans who married Addisons and changed their names were still coping with their lousy place in past lines.
These two experiments have a relatively obvious shortcoming: people who responded more slowly to the e-mail offers could have just been checking their accounts less frequently. A third experiment addressed that issue by giving everyone a deal simultaneously. At the end of a college wine-evaluation class, the instructor told the attendees they'd get $5 and a bottle of wine if they participated in a 45-min. study a few days later. As expected, students with late-in-the-alphabet names were more likely to accept the offer, and they did so faster than the others.
In a final experiment, researchers asked 41 undergraduate students to imagine a scenario in which they needed a backpack, then saw a bookstore sign offering the item at 20% off "while supplies last." But, the students were told, they did not have their wallet, and it would take 15 minutes to fetch it and return to buy the backpack. THe late-in-the-alphabet students were more likely to say they found the discount appealing and that they'd run home to close the deal.
The results are provocative, but come on: Isn't it a stretch to posit that one's place in a grammar-school lunch line has any impact on adult behavior? Perhaps not, at least according to my own utterly unscientific surveys. I grabbed a TIME staff list and started scanning the Z's. I found one Paul Zelinski, 59, a production director for TIME and sports Illustrated for Kids. Zelinski says he spent many days in the back of the class as a student in Brooklyn Catholic schools. "In grammar school, I didn't mind, because there was this girl next to me who was cute", says Zelinski. " But in high school, it stunk. I couldn't see over the taller guys in front of me"
Upon hearing an explanation of the last-name effect, Zelinski said it made perfect sense. He's always looking to close a deal quickly. He recently bought a car on the Internet; instead of haggling forever, he got what he considered a fair price, made the purchase and moved on.
Zelinski still frets about being in the back. In early January, he attended college football's national championship game in Arizona, where he stood near a railing for two hours to guarantee a good view of the Auburn pep rally. He also says he gets to New York Giants game early, at 8 a.m., to tailgate, because he fears that the prime spots will run out. " Idon't know if that has to do with being Zelinski or being Polish", he says. " I might have to go into therapy next week to find out"
What do the lucky ones at the front of the line think? Do they, in fact, inquire about things more slowly than poor souls named Zelinski? I scanned the contact list in my cell phone. Since I don't have a direct line to Hank Aaron or former New York Mets relief pitcher Don Aase, my first entry is Henry Abbott, the excellent basketball writer who runs the True Hoop blog at ESP totally fit this theory" says abbott, 36. "My wife calls me the researcher. I don't get dazzled by the first deal. I just finished scanning 30 websites for a stupid muzzle for my dog"
Does he buy the last-name effect? "Maybe," he says. " I can understand that if my name began with a Z, I'd be sick of waiting. I do have a feeling that if I miss a deal, there are going to be other good deals." Three days later, Abbott e-mailed me a note: "Found myself thinking about this story several times since we talked. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense"
The last-name effect has very practical implications. Companies especially those pitching limited-time offers, should first mail out those promotions to consumers with surnames that fall deeper in the alphabet. Shoppers with these names should be more aware of their tendencies. Does it really make sense for me to buy this item? Or is alphabet angst at play?
As for teachers, the takeaway is clear. " There may be no great alternatives to alphabetical order", says Carlson. "but, flip it around every now and then. That's a reasonable way to balance things out."
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2045050,00.html
According to a new study, people whose surnames start with letters late in the alphabet may be the fastest to buy. What could possibly explain this weird phenomenon, which the study authors dubbed "the last -name effect"? The research didn't provide a definitive reason, but the authors offer an intriguing theory. Since America's obsession with alphabetical order often forces the Z's to the back of the line in childhood, they suffer.They were always the last to get lunch in the cafeteria --sorry, Young , the other kids bought all the chocolate milk again-- and had to beg for the teacher's attention from the back of the classroom. So later in life, when the Z's -- and even onetime Z's who became A's through marriage see an item they really like for sale or are offered a deal, they jump on it, afraid that supplies won't last. The chocolate milk is finally in front of them. So they grab it.
"For years, simply because of your name, you've received inequitable treatment," says Kurt Carlson , an assistant professor at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business and a co-author of the papre, which is to be published in the Journal of Consumer research. " So when you get to exercise control, you seize on opportunity. It's a coping strategy, and over time it becomes a natural way to respond"
Carlson and Jacqueline Conard an assistant professor at the Massey Graduate school of business at belmont Univ uncoveered the last-name effect through four different experiments. In the first one, MBA students received offers via e-mail for four free tickets to a women's basketball game but were told the overall supply was limited. The average response time for people with names beginning with one of the last nine letters of the alphabet, T through Z was 19.38 minutes. Those with names starting with one of the first nine letters, A through I, replied in 25.08 minutes a statestically significant diferences.
For the second experiment, 280 adults with an average age of 39.1 responded to an e-mail invitation to fill out an online survey. In exchange, they were told, they had a 1 in 500 chance of winning $500 in a drawing. (In fact, since only 280 people responded, the odds were much better.) Again, people with surnames closer to the end of the alphabet responded faster to the offer. The results didn't idffer by gender, and the researchers also found that people whose current surnames were at the beggining of the alphabet but whose childhood surnames had been closer to the end also responded to the offer more quickly. In other words, Zimmermans who married Addisons and changed their names were still coping with their lousy place in past lines.
These two experiments have a relatively obvious shortcoming: people who responded more slowly to the e-mail offers could have just been checking their accounts less frequently. A third experiment addressed that issue by giving everyone a deal simultaneously. At the end of a college wine-evaluation class, the instructor told the attendees they'd get $5 and a bottle of wine if they participated in a 45-min. study a few days later. As expected, students with late-in-the-alphabet names were more likely to accept the offer, and they did so faster than the others.
In a final experiment, researchers asked 41 undergraduate students to imagine a scenario in which they needed a backpack, then saw a bookstore sign offering the item at 20% off "while supplies last." But, the students were told, they did not have their wallet, and it would take 15 minutes to fetch it and return to buy the backpack. THe late-in-the-alphabet students were more likely to say they found the discount appealing and that they'd run home to close the deal.
The results are provocative, but come on: Isn't it a stretch to posit that one's place in a grammar-school lunch line has any impact on adult behavior? Perhaps not, at least according to my own utterly unscientific surveys. I grabbed a TIME staff list and started scanning the Z's. I found one Paul Zelinski, 59, a production director for TIME and sports Illustrated for Kids. Zelinski says he spent many days in the back of the class as a student in Brooklyn Catholic schools. "In grammar school, I didn't mind, because there was this girl next to me who was cute", says Zelinski. " But in high school, it stunk. I couldn't see over the taller guys in front of me"
Upon hearing an explanation of the last-name effect, Zelinski said it made perfect sense. He's always looking to close a deal quickly. He recently bought a car on the Internet; instead of haggling forever, he got what he considered a fair price, made the purchase and moved on.
Zelinski still frets about being in the back. In early January, he attended college football's national championship game in Arizona, where he stood near a railing for two hours to guarantee a good view of the Auburn pep rally. He also says he gets to New York Giants game early, at 8 a.m., to tailgate, because he fears that the prime spots will run out. " Idon't know if that has to do with being Zelinski or being Polish", he says. " I might have to go into therapy next week to find out"
What do the lucky ones at the front of the line think? Do they, in fact, inquire about things more slowly than poor souls named Zelinski? I scanned the contact list in my cell phone. Since I don't have a direct line to Hank Aaron or former New York Mets relief pitcher Don Aase, my first entry is Henry Abbott, the excellent basketball writer who runs the True Hoop blog at ESP totally fit this theory" says abbott, 36. "My wife calls me the researcher. I don't get dazzled by the first deal. I just finished scanning 30 websites for a stupid muzzle for my dog"
Does he buy the last-name effect? "Maybe," he says. " I can understand that if my name began with a Z, I'd be sick of waiting. I do have a feeling that if I miss a deal, there are going to be other good deals." Three days later, Abbott e-mailed me a note: "Found myself thinking about this story several times since we talked. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense"
The last-name effect has very practical implications. Companies especially those pitching limited-time offers, should first mail out those promotions to consumers with surnames that fall deeper in the alphabet. Shoppers with these names should be more aware of their tendencies. Does it really make sense for me to buy this item? Or is alphabet angst at play?
As for teachers, the takeaway is clear. " There may be no great alternatives to alphabetical order", says Carlson. "but, flip it around every now and then. That's a reasonable way to balance things out."
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2045050,00.html
Google Dials up voice service in Egypt
Google is working some new connections.
The search giant has thrust itself into the ongoing upheaval in Egypt by working with Twitter to expand communications options for Egyptians, and in so doing, the Internet search shop took another big step into telcoterritory.
Through the acquisition of SayNow, Google and Twitter have created a service used by Egyptian protesters and supporters to post voice message online. With Internet services cut off there, the few remaining phone networks have been the only communications links available in many parts of Egypt.
Google says it acquiresd SayNow last week, a calling and voice meessaging service used largely as a publicity tool for celebrities and performers. In the following days since the purchase, Google says it has worked with the SayNow staff and with Twitter to allow Egyptians to leave voice mails that are posted as Tweets at Twitter's speak2 Tweet.
The workaround scheme to thwart the Mubarak government's Internet shut down not only puts Google in the international spotlight, but it highlights the Net giant's broader ambitions as it takes on a larger role as an alternate international phone company.
Web-calling services like google voice and Skype have taken a big chunk out of the conventinal calling business, and international telcos.
Last year, Google introduced Google Voice, whose virtual dial pad allows users to make free calls via their computers. The dialing feature was an addition to the Google Chat video calling services that rivals skype.
Last week , Google started offeering users the ability to move or port their phone numbers to Google voice from their telco accounts.
Google, it seems, wants to be the new phone company.
Google shares were up 2% to $611.10 in afternoon trading Tuesday.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/01/google-dials-up-voice-service-in-egypt.html
The search giant has thrust itself into the ongoing upheaval in Egypt by working with Twitter to expand communications options for Egyptians, and in so doing, the Internet search shop took another big step into telcoterritory.
Through the acquisition of SayNow, Google and Twitter have created a service used by Egyptian protesters and supporters to post voice message online. With Internet services cut off there, the few remaining phone networks have been the only communications links available in many parts of Egypt.
Google says it acquiresd SayNow last week, a calling and voice meessaging service used largely as a publicity tool for celebrities and performers. In the following days since the purchase, Google says it has worked with the SayNow staff and with Twitter to allow Egyptians to leave voice mails that are posted as Tweets at Twitter's speak2 Tweet.
The workaround scheme to thwart the Mubarak government's Internet shut down not only puts Google in the international spotlight, but it highlights the Net giant's broader ambitions as it takes on a larger role as an alternate international phone company.
Web-calling services like google voice and Skype have taken a big chunk out of the conventinal calling business, and international telcos.
Last year, Google introduced Google Voice, whose virtual dial pad allows users to make free calls via their computers. The dialing feature was an addition to the Google Chat video calling services that rivals skype.
Last week , Google started offeering users the ability to move or port their phone numbers to Google voice from their telco accounts.
Google, it seems, wants to be the new phone company.
Google shares were up 2% to $611.10 in afternoon trading Tuesday.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/01/google-dials-up-voice-service-in-egypt.html
2011年2月4日金曜日
Google wants to fight smartphones battle on Web
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20030589-265.html?tag=topStories3 より
Google has been playing catch-up to Apple in the mobile world for several years, but it's starting to carve out its own nich by emphasizing its strength on the Web.
The Android Market Web Store was the most interesting thing to emerge from yesterday's event at Google headquarters, and it's one that Apple can't easly duplicate overnight. It's also in keeping with Google's philosophy of pushing Web development over native software development when possible, a strategy that isn't always practical on smartphones but is starting to make more sense as computing power grows in tablets.
Most importantly for Google, it gives Android uses a clearner, simpler, and more user-friendly option for buying apps than the much-maligned Android Market. It should also appeal to developers, who will have many more options at their fingertips for promoting their apps on the store and a better chance of being found within the see of application.
The advantages of the Android Market Web Store are simple: Android users can browse app selections just like any other Web site from any Web-connected device, rather than dealing with the small, cluttered and awkward Android Market interface on their phones. A purchased app is linked with a Google Account rather than a device. so it can be automatically pushed to any Android devices registered to that account at the time of purchase.
And Google has also come up with something that hits Apple where it hurts: Web services. For all its skill in designing mobile hardware and software, Apple hasn't been able to come up with all that many services that tie everything together over the Web.(Find my iphone is a notable exception, but that requires a $99 annual subscription to MobileMe.
Apple's iTunes is the hub for its mobile strategy, and even the most diehard Apple fan would admit the desktop application is getting abit long in the tooth. iTunes has given Apple an centralized distribution and payment-processing system that's arguably as responsible for the growth of iPS as anything, but it's resource-intensive any linked to a single computer: youcan manage and purchase apps on the iPhone or iPad, of course, but if you want to back them up, you have to physically connect the device to computer.
Google has long sought to eliminate that link with its Android strategy, pitching its Web-based services as a selling point for those concerned about app backup and contact management. However, if didn't really have a credible alternative to the ease-of-use that accompanies app shopping on a bigger screen, not to mention the rather poor experience in the native Android Market. Now it does.
Eric Chu, mobile platforms product manager for Google, said that the Web Store won't replace the native Android Market on phones and tablets as yet. He said Google will continue to make improvements to the native store because that's still probably the best experience on phones.
But Google's quest in this world is to one day replace software developed for specific machines withsoftware developed on and for the Web. Mobile devices lag behind their desktop counterparts when it comes to supporting this kind of strategy(and even desktops aren't all the way there) but as standards get sorted out and mobile browsers become more powerful, the conditions needed to allow that to happen will start to come together.
Google has been playing catch-up to Apple in the mobile world for several years, but it's starting to carve out its own nich by emphasizing its strength on the Web.
The Android Market Web Store was the most interesting thing to emerge from yesterday's event at Google headquarters, and it's one that Apple can't easly duplicate overnight. It's also in keeping with Google's philosophy of pushing Web development over native software development when possible, a strategy that isn't always practical on smartphones but is starting to make more sense as computing power grows in tablets.
Most importantly for Google, it gives Android uses a clearner, simpler, and more user-friendly option for buying apps than the much-maligned Android Market. It should also appeal to developers, who will have many more options at their fingertips for promoting their apps on the store and a better chance of being found within the see of application.
The advantages of the Android Market Web Store are simple: Android users can browse app selections just like any other Web site from any Web-connected device, rather than dealing with the small, cluttered and awkward Android Market interface on their phones. A purchased app is linked with a Google Account rather than a device. so it can be automatically pushed to any Android devices registered to that account at the time of purchase.
And Google has also come up with something that hits Apple where it hurts: Web services. For all its skill in designing mobile hardware and software, Apple hasn't been able to come up with all that many services that tie everything together over the Web.(Find my iphone is a notable exception, but that requires a $99 annual subscription to MobileMe.
Apple's iTunes is the hub for its mobile strategy, and even the most diehard Apple fan would admit the desktop application is getting abit long in the tooth. iTunes has given Apple an centralized distribution and payment-processing system that's arguably as responsible for the growth of iPS as anything, but it's resource-intensive any linked to a single computer: youcan manage and purchase apps on the iPhone or iPad, of course, but if you want to back them up, you have to physically connect the device to computer.
Google has long sought to eliminate that link with its Android strategy, pitching its Web-based services as a selling point for those concerned about app backup and contact management. However, if didn't really have a credible alternative to the ease-of-use that accompanies app shopping on a bigger screen, not to mention the rather poor experience in the native Android Market. Now it does.
Eric Chu, mobile platforms product manager for Google, said that the Web Store won't replace the native Android Market on phones and tablets as yet. He said Google will continue to make improvements to the native store because that's still probably the best experience on phones.
But Google's quest in this world is to one day replace software developed for specific machines withsoftware developed on and for the Web. Mobile devices lag behind their desktop counterparts when it comes to supporting this kind of strategy(and even desktops aren't all the way there) but as standards get sorted out and mobile browsers become more powerful, the conditions needed to allow that to happen will start to come together.
Report: 90% of Americans own a computerized gadget
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/02/03/texting.photos.gahran/index.html より
If it seems like nearly everyone you see these days, from kids to seniors, has some kind of tech gadget handy, it's not just your imagination.
According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project, nearly 90% of Americans now own a cell phone, computer, MP3 player, game console, e-book reader or tablet computer.
In generations and their gadgets, Pew explores how age groups in the U.S. tend to use their tech devices. It defines six generations ranging from age 18 to 75-plus.
A few highlights about how Americans of different ages use mobile devices:
Cell phones
Eighty-five percent of Americans currently own cell phones, making it the single most popular type of tech gadget. Slightly more Americans use their cell phones to take pictures(76%) than to send ore receive text message(72%) -- but across all age groups, those two non-voice call activities are the most popular.
Among the 15% of Americans who do not own a cell phone, one-third live in a household with at least one working cell phone. So, overall, "90% of all adults (including 62% of those age 75 and older) live in a household with at least one working cell phone", the survey finds.
Also, Pew notes that as of June, about a quarter of all U.S. households had gone mobile-only, ditching their traditional "landline" phone connections.
This includes more than half of all adults ages 25 to 29 and it indicates how crucial it is to update the U.S. 911 emergency calling system to be more friendly to cell phones, as well as to accomodate more types of communication than voice calls.
Even though more people are getting smartphones (30 percent of U.S. cell phone owners, by most estimates), only Americans ages 18 to34 are especially likely to use their phones for several purposes: internet access, e-mail, games, getting or playing music, sending or receiving photos, recording video, etc.
The only widely popular activities across all age groups are taking pictures and text messaging, which may explain why 70% of Americans still rely on non-smart "feature phones", which have fewer bells and whistles.
MP3 players
As, tech gadgets go, MP3 players are relatively limited devices. So it's a bit surprising that the youngest and most tech-savvy age group Pew studies is by far the most likely to own an MP3 player.
Three-quarters of American ages 18 to 34 own an MP3 player, but only 56% of the next oldest group(35 to 46) do.
Tablets
As of September,5% of U.S. adults owned tablet computers such as the iPad or Galaxy Tab, up from 3% in May. (Apple's popular iPad hit U.S. stores in April.)
With the launch of several Android-based iPad competitors. expect this kind of device to become much more popular in the next year. it'll be interesting to see whether tablet ownership starts to displace some ownership of laptop computers.
E-readers
Currently, 5% of Americans own e-reader devices such as the Kindle or Nook, but this vastly underestimate the total number of people who read e-books.
Many people read e-books ontheir smartphones, tablets, and desktop or laptop computers. E-reader devices are most popular among Americans ager 47 to 56.
I suspect that in the next year, tablets will shake up all kinds of patterns of mobile device ownership and use in the U.S.
If tablet prices start to drop and more options for size and connectivity emerge(especially likely for aAndroid models), it's possible that that many people who rely primarily on feature phones might choose to invest in a Wi-Fi-enabled tablet( a one-time expense) rather than upgrading to a full smartphone(with higher monthly bills and often unexpected charges).
The opinions expressed in this story are solely those of Amy Gahran.
If it seems like nearly everyone you see these days, from kids to seniors, has some kind of tech gadget handy, it's not just your imagination.
According to a new report from the Pew Internet and American Life project, nearly 90% of Americans now own a cell phone, computer, MP3 player, game console, e-book reader or tablet computer.
In generations and their gadgets, Pew explores how age groups in the U.S. tend to use their tech devices. It defines six generations ranging from age 18 to 75-plus.
A few highlights about how Americans of different ages use mobile devices:
Cell phones
Eighty-five percent of Americans currently own cell phones, making it the single most popular type of tech gadget. Slightly more Americans use their cell phones to take pictures(76%) than to send ore receive text message(72%) -- but across all age groups, those two non-voice call activities are the most popular.
Among the 15% of Americans who do not own a cell phone, one-third live in a household with at least one working cell phone. So, overall, "90% of all adults (including 62% of those age 75 and older) live in a household with at least one working cell phone", the survey finds.
Also, Pew notes that as of June, about a quarter of all U.S. households had gone mobile-only, ditching their traditional "landline" phone connections.
This includes more than half of all adults ages 25 to 29 and it indicates how crucial it is to update the U.S. 911 emergency calling system to be more friendly to cell phones, as well as to accomodate more types of communication than voice calls.
Even though more people are getting smartphones (30 percent of U.S. cell phone owners, by most estimates), only Americans ages 18 to34 are especially likely to use their phones for several purposes: internet access, e-mail, games, getting or playing music, sending or receiving photos, recording video, etc.
The only widely popular activities across all age groups are taking pictures and text messaging, which may explain why 70% of Americans still rely on non-smart "feature phones", which have fewer bells and whistles.
MP3 players
As, tech gadgets go, MP3 players are relatively limited devices. So it's a bit surprising that the youngest and most tech-savvy age group Pew studies is by far the most likely to own an MP3 player.
Three-quarters of American ages 18 to 34 own an MP3 player, but only 56% of the next oldest group(35 to 46) do.
Tablets
As of September,5% of U.S. adults owned tablet computers such as the iPad or Galaxy Tab, up from 3% in May. (Apple's popular iPad hit U.S. stores in April.)
With the launch of several Android-based iPad competitors. expect this kind of device to become much more popular in the next year. it'll be interesting to see whether tablet ownership starts to displace some ownership of laptop computers.
E-readers
Currently, 5% of Americans own e-reader devices such as the Kindle or Nook, but this vastly underestimate the total number of people who read e-books.
Many people read e-books ontheir smartphones, tablets, and desktop or laptop computers. E-reader devices are most popular among Americans ager 47 to 56.
I suspect that in the next year, tablets will shake up all kinds of patterns of mobile device ownership and use in the U.S.
If tablet prices start to drop and more options for size and connectivity emerge(especially likely for aAndroid models), it's possible that that many people who rely primarily on feature phones might choose to invest in a Wi-Fi-enabled tablet( a one-time expense) rather than upgrading to a full smartphone(with higher monthly bills and often unexpected charges).
The opinions expressed in this story are solely those of Amy Gahran.
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