Disrupting Innovation

There are 3 ways to get a Google Wave invitation:

I have been working in Google for a while and we studied different call to action words/sentence in order to make ads more effective.

Today there was a terrible earthquake in the hearth of Italy. Here some pictures reminding us of the crude reality of life.

I have worked in Google for more than two years and I enjoy the world of advertising. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Italy) where creative advertising is associated with pictures of naked women. This is how creative Italian ad agencies are. Therefore I am extremely happy when I come across some well written ads and funny ideas, like the ones below from Miele, a German manufacturer of high-end domestic appliances.
Disclaimer: I do not own any Miele appliance:)

Enjoy them below:

Miele silent Vacuum cleaner



The "sucked" dog

The thing about being optimistic is that it takes a lot of hard work. It's an active process, say psychologists, through which you force yourself to see your life a certain way. Indeed, the leading optimism and happiness experts consider themselves born pessimists. But if they have learned over time and with lots of practice to become more hopeful, so can you.

Tal Ben-Shahar is a Harvard professor who taught the university's most popular course, Positive Psychology, from 2002 to 2008.

In his own life, Ben-Shahar uses three exercises, which he calls PRP. When he feels down--say, after giving a bad lecture--he grants himself permission (P) to be human. He reminds himself that not every lecture can be a Nobel winner; some will be less effective than others. Next is reconstruction (R). He parses the weak lecture, learning lessons for the future about what works and what doesn't. Finally, there's perspective (P), which involves acknowledging that in the grand scheme of life, one lecture really doesn't matter.
I think it is a great way to cope with reality and it will definitely make us happier in life.


Read full "Time" article here

The World is changing, people are changing.

When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school. When you write a blog, no one cares whether you have a journalism degree. Position, title, and academic degrees—none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online.

On the Web, what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute.

Finally Skype has arrived on the most expensive and trendy phone on the planet. Who cares?
A lot of us actually care, because we are all eager to make free or cheap phone call to everyone, everywhere...but is it really worth ?

There are two main issues that make me think this is just half of a great project. You can only make calls while you are on a wi-fi network. Apple's restrictions on the use of its software development kit mean that Voip applications cannot use the 3G network. This is not a minor limitation.

The other main issue is that all iPhones, by default, do not allow you to have more than one application open at the same time. This means that your Skype friends will not probably be able to get you on the phone unless you happen to be in the app exactly when they call.

What might make it into a killer application is free video calls - which aren't available on any device right now, according to my knowledge. But for that to happen on an iPhone, it would need a new camera on the front of the phone and I do not think Apple is going to build it only for us to enjoy free video calls.

No matter how good you think you are - you can only work on one single thing at any one time. And that one thing you decide to work on is the highest priority item to you at that time. Somehow in your decision making process you have come to the conclusion that the particular item is the highest priority possible. I

Get a notebook and do the following:

i) First thing in the morning, take 5 minutes and write down all your outstanding tasks on a piece of paper

ii) Rank each task with the following letters
a. A - is the urgent and important items that need to be taken care of
b. B - is the medium and semi-important tasks
c. C - is the low priority items that are not urgent nor important.

iii) The "A's" are the tasks that need to be completed first.

iv) Rank all the A's with a number 1, 2, 3, ... And down through the B's and C's too.

v) Your Priority list is now ranked as A1, A2, ...An, B1, B2, .... Bn, C1, C2, ... Cn.

vi) Complete you tasks in order throughout the day in the order they are in your list, and add new ones as they come up

vii) Always carry your paper task list with you to meetings etc to have it handy.

viii) The next morning, start over. Take 5 minutes and write down all outstanding tasks and rank them as A, B and C, etc...

Enjoy it and be more productive from tomorrow !

In order to better manage with your full inbox you need to know the 4 Ds of Email Management.

For each email you receive you have to do one of the following 4 actions:

1) Delete it = it isn't relevant to you or should be deleted after a quick scan

2) Do it = Do it now - before you read the next email. Any item that takes less than 2 minutes to complete should be done now.

3) Delegate it = Have somebody else do it - so forward on the request

4) Date/Time Action it = This is the most difficult scenario to manage! Not all emails can be actioned immediately, nor should they be. It may be an email related to checking on a status of something a month from now, or will take a significant amount of time that needs to be reserved in your calendar. Most people take the approach that outstanding mails would be marked as "Unread" and hopefully checked again tomorrow (I am one of them). But most become buried in the sea of incoming emails the next day and lost or not actioned. To deal with these emails read the next posts.

Like the "one laptop for a child" campaign, this is a fantastic, disrupting, useful innovation.

Professor Joshua D Silver, while studying mirrors, discovered a new way to change the curvature of lenses. He applied this to create a new form of liquid-filled corrective lens, that could be easily adjusted by the wearer to correct the vision of over 90% of people requiring correction. This is particularly useful for people in developing countries where specially trained optometrists are not available.
This kind of glasses cost as much as 20 US$, but when in production their cost could go down up to 1$.
Check out the video on YouTube.

YouTube, hoping to counter the competition from sites like NBC and Hulu, has started running full-length episodes of CBS programming.

Executives at the Google-owned video site told Reuters that CBS would handle ad sales for its shows and share the revenue with YouTube. In the meantime, CBS does not have a programming deal with Hulu, although the video site does direct users who search for that network’s shows back to the CBS site.

CBS has one of the most subscribed channels on YouTube, with 83,000 users signed up. The channel debuted two years ago and has recorded 4.2 million views. There are only four CBS shows currently available in the full-episode mode on YouYube-- Beverly Hills 90210, StarTrek: The Original Series, The Young and the Restless and MacGyver.

You can access the episodes from here, but geographic restrictions applies (US residents only).

The title says it all.

WorldMate Live: check your flight on real time
WorldMate Live will manage your full itinerary, including travel arrangements and business meetings, making all details immediately accessible on your mobile device, and ensure smooth as possible trip by pushing alerts regarding imminent events.
Free features available include the My Itineraries function, which stores information on flights, hotels, meetings, public transportation and car rentals on BlackBerrys. The application also lets users export travel information from booking confirmation e-mails, corporate calendars and more, directly into WorldMate Live, and it automatically assembles their itineraries.



Google Maps: Mobile Mapping With Satellite Imagery
Google Maps for BlackBerry is a mobile mapping application that provides location-based information and services to mobile handsets with or without the use of GPS. The "My Location" function employs nearby cell towers to determine rough locations of mobile phone users so no information needs to be entered. The application also provides satellite imagery from the Google Earth service and can deliver driving--or step-by-step walking--directions with real-time traffic alerts in some 30 major U.S. cities.

The author is unknown, the story is amazing, enjoy it :

An American businessman was standing at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.

"How long it took you to catch them?" The American asked.
"Only a little while." The Mexican replied.
"Why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" The American then asked.
"I have enough to support my family's immediate needs." The Mexican said.
"But," The American then asked, "What do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life, senor."

The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds you buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats."

"Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own can factory. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise."

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But senor, how long will this all take?"
To which the American replied, "15-20 years."
"But what then, senor?"

The American laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO (Initial Public Offering) and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions, senor? Then what?"

The American said slowly, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos..."

This is taken from a Martin Luther King speech:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

1. Think of a situation, product, or concept, related to a challenge you are facing, and think about the assumptions associated to that situation

2. Write down those assumptions; then reverse them

3. Finally, think about how to make those reversal meaningful

Example taken from "Cracking Creativity" by Michael Michalko
Suppose you wish to open a restaurant but are having difficulty coming up with new ideas and a novel concept.
Write the most common assumptions about running a restaurant:

ASSUMPTION
Restaurants have menus
REVERSAL
Restaurant have no menus


ASSUMPTION
Restaurants charge money for food
REVERSAL
Restaurants do not charge money for food


ASSUMPTION
Restaurants serve food
REVERSAL
Restaurants do not serve food

Now think about a reversal business.

A restaurant with no menus.
The chef informs each customer what he bought that day at the market: meat, vegetables and fish. The client selects the food and the chef makes something out of it, unique and specific for each customer.

A restaurant that does not charge for food
This restaurant is a coffee bar where people get together to talk and work with each other. The restaurant charges for the time spent there. Selected low cost food and beverages are given for free.

A restaurant that does not serve food
The restaurant has a unique and beautiful decor in an exotic environment. People bring their own food and beverages in picnic baskets and pay a service charge for the location.

Escape the usual chain of associations and come up with new ideas !

Another example is to make a banking experience pleasant.
Instead of thinking how can I make it pleasant, think the opposite way.
I can I make it horrible? The answer might yeld to some interesting insights.
Try to enter in a bank in Italy and you will understand :)

Any other examples ?

This is one of the presentation which won the Slideshare competition.

Robert Mugabe once was hailed as a symbol of the new Africa, but under his rule the health and well-being of his people have dropped dramatically, which is as much an abuse of human rights as arbitrary arrest and torture. According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe has the world’s shortest life expectancy—37 years for men and 34 for women. It also has the greatest percentage of orphans (about 25%, says UNICEF) and the worst annual inflation rate (1,281% as of last month). He last allowed an election in 2002 but “won” only after having his leading opponent arrested for treason.

On April 8, 2005, Mugabe attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II, a move which could be seen as defiance of a European Union travel ban that does not, however, apply to Vatican City. He was granted a transit visa by the Italian authorities, as they are obliged to under the Concordat.

Because United Nations events are exempt from the travel bans, Mugabe attended the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) summit in Rome. African leaders threatened to boycott the event if Mugabe were blacklisted; when he was not, the United Kingdom refused to send a representative. British and Australian officials denounced the presence of Mugabe.

Italy is among the few countries in the World that passively accepted Mugabe in their land; what sort of country entitles a ferocious dictator like him to freely walk without being arrested ?

I agree with Nicholas Carr that states :

To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system - the needle's eye through which the outputs of the company's massive data centers usually have to pass to reach the user - and as a result the browser has to be rethought, revamped, retooled, modernized.

Its real goal, embedded in Chrome's open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications. The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message.

Also Google may want to switch from being a pure advertising profit company to a more mathematical algorithmical reality. This is the foundation of the company and I think Larry and Sergey see themselves more as engineers rather than marketeers.

According to some rumours Google is about to launch a new web browser.

What would happen if Google decides to release a Safari-based browser?
A Google Browser would give the Webkit platform instant credibility and would definitely be a huge hit (and it will be Open Source).
If Google offered a browser that was as powerful, reliable and easy to use as their search engine and didn't mess up with our system, everyone, I mean EVERYONE, will download it.
IT departments wanting to switch away from IE would have some formidable gunpowder when talking to upper management.
"A Google Browser ? Really? Trash IE and Safari ...install it immediately on all the machines !"

More to follow...

Steven Levitt did a great speech at TED . He told the story of the car seats.

Turns out that car seats for kids over 2 are no more effective than seat belts.
His study took in consideration 45,000 cra crashes during 30 years, from 1975 to 2005.
So if it's so clear, and if it means that Americans are wasting $300 million a year on car seats, what's going on?
Why is it that in New York State it's a crime to put a six year old in the backseat of your car with just a seatbelt?
For more details check out this video.

Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings.

Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.

Whatever the underlying causes may be, people coping with cancer diagnoses and other serious conditions are increasingly seeking—and finding—solace in the blogosphere. “Blogging undoubtedly affords similar benefits” to expressive writing, says Morgan, who wants to incorporate writing programs into supportive care for cancer patients.

Some hospitals have started hosting patient-authored blogs on their Web sites as clinicians begin to recognize the therapeutic value. Unlike a bedside journal, blogging offers the added benefit of receptive readers in similar situations, Morgan explains: “Individuals are connecting to one another and witnessing each other’s expressions—the basis for forming a community.”

Extract from SCIAM website