Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “leading”
I needed a little inspiration in the challenges of being an entrepreneur and inventor. I just checked out the Wright Brothers because at the time they pioneered human flight there were hundreds of others trying to do just the same. I wanted to understand how long it took them. What kinds of things they did. How much detail they went into and …
The evolution of learning is a fascinating topic. Learning is my strength because I was brought up to think that learning is innate and every challenge is surmountable. In fact learning is never really changing, only the tools and processes we use to learn will change. The education industry has been struggling to figure out how these new tools can …
So I’ve had this niggling question for quite a while now. ‘Why do most drinks available not quench your thirst?’. for along time I’ve been ordering a separate glass of water with any drink at a restaurant. In a club or bar I just accept that each drink is going to make me want another. But why is this the …
For me the answer is a definitive yes. The more I apply evolutionary principles in thinking about business the more I see it fits and the more I feel I understand business. It’s why I like capitalism. It’s a very harsh approach, which I don’t like, but then is’n’t natural selection. Natural selection is about competing for energy and essential …
Nice to see IBM is pushing out new data analysis tools for tennis. They’re debuting the pointstream service at the US Open 2010. I played with it a little. Boy does it have a lot of data. From a momentum meter to a representation of every single point in the match. You can easily see serves, rallies, break points, double …
I just heard this talk and had to share it. It’s helped me understand why I achieve things and shows how focusing on money rewards is a recipe for failure not success. It’s my mantra but it’s explained so eloquently in this piece. Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action – Simon Sinek (2009): “Simon Sinek has a simple but …
Just saw a presentation by Pranav Mistry about his amazing invention called sixth sense. Had to record it for reference. He said he’ll open source the code and it should cost $350 when released. I just want to know when and where. If it’s as good as he says thtem I’m on board. My expectation though is that it won’t …
wouldn’t it be cool if you could embed charts right into a web page. I thought it would so I thought I’d find out how and write about it. Just planned to use google docs spreadsheets, create a chart and then get it into my blog some how.the approach I’ve tried was particularly easy to find in google docs help, which …
In my experience of learning I so often find that there are so few opportunities to lead and mentor. For the stronger students to help the less able. I always noticed that every student had at least one class in which they excelled. In that class they were confident and happy. I don’t feel our system does much to help …
Just been playing tennis. I’ve always wanted a handicapping system like that in golf to help each player compate themselves fairly given different skills and abilities. Then realised new tech like fitbit and other wearable activity monitors could do this by helping me limit the shots I play or the speed I run to match my opponent. I have learnt …
To explain the things happening around us I like to learn from history. I feel so many lessons of past ages can still be applied today and tomorrow if you yake the time to apply them properly. What older lesson is there than that of evolution. It’s always applied to the context of biology and how we have arrived at …
It’s 2009 and while searching for devices with wireless health sensors I’m starting to uncover that we’re really on the brink of these things going mainstream. I’m really getting excited about it. I’ve mentioned the Fitbit elsewhere as a consumer grade version. Everytime I search now I’m finding more and more developments and products reaching maturity. Under the term wireless body area networks (WBANS) reports that …
I was just passed a fascinating article describing Adobes fascinating approach to delivering flash on the iPhone. In this article I can across the Open Screen Project that is trying to make it easier to deliver quality users interfaces across all the upcoming screen types from mobile phones and other handheld devices to large screen tvs with browsers or operating systems …
The age old question for me is whether one device can do enough to track my activity in the way I want it to? I’ve seen plenty of devices, like the rest of us. One of my favourites is fitbug. My wife had one for a few years and swore by it. It accurately tracked her steps, uploaded data to …
Twitter is micro blogging qnd blogger is macro. Often I don’t want to post just to blogger but my comment is longer than 140 characters. Why can’t something just post the first 140 or so to twitter. Then full post to blogger and put a link on the twitter post for the rest. Then I don’t have to duplicate and …
A set of tools I see as useful are ones for cooking. I want a cooking thesaurus and dictionary. Some thing to help me replace items in recipes I don’t have in stock with things I do. Like I’m running out of rice. I have couscous in stock. I have tapioca at work. Should I use those and bring the …
Just heard about a useful regular expression tool http://regexpal.com/. You can debug the expression in a web browser. How useful. Just logging here for reference. 20091201I also found help at regular-expressions.info and the examples provided. Regexbuddy sounds like a useful tool
Listening to an npr podcast about the human power movement I had the vision of a gym room where the lighting, audio and video are powered by harvesting the energy generting from the exercisers themselves.Just thought it would be cool if the bikes, treadmills and other machines actually fed generators which provide the rooms power. Just thought it would be …
I’ve just been impressed again. I heard about ipadio this morning and installed to my phone. Just checked it out at http://www.ipadio.com found someones phlog (phone log) http://www.ipadio.com/phlogs/MarkSmith3/2009/09/01/Fish and saw the transcript of their aduio blog. Couldn’t believe it just had the text right there. I’m definitely excited to try this. Apparently the speech to text part is delivered by …
I remember being on an IT helpdesk as first line support. It was telephone support not face to face or email. This meant I was the first person people would speak to about their problem. So I gave the initial impression of the quality of support. I learnt a lot about how to build trust while supporting applications and products …