Grand Central

Ah, if only this worked in Australia. On the long list of Things The World Really Needs But Doesn't Know It Yet a unified and easily configured communications system is very close to the top.

Gimmethetoy!!

Invisible competition

Another from the geek shall inherit the earth file:

The greatest gains in this new world are likely to go to people who are methodical planners or who love the game for its own sake. Some people plot their competitive strategies far in advance. These �planners?�be they crazy or just highly �productive?�don?t need anyone breathing down their necks, and indeed they often work best alone or in small groups. ... Planners? behavior may manifest itself in competitive forms, but their underlying psychology is often not very rivalrous at all. They are ordering their own realities, usually for their individual psychological reasons, rather than acting out of a desire to trounce the �competition.

The ?invisible? quality to competition in massive distributed groups is leveling the playing field, or is it simply providing a medium for expression, an outlet or conduit that doesn?t necessarily favour the brash and classically competitive who thrive in s smaller context?

The New Invisible Competitors - by Tyler Cowen

Jihadinets

This article posits a startling idea - militant groups using virtual worlds to conspire. Is Neuromancer really so close to becoming a fact?! [Via the excellent wanabehuman]

Prioritising and over-optimising

I'm suffering a bit from overload at the moment so I thought I'd share two prioritisation tips that I'm making use of:

1. The first was taught to me by a former teacher and is used everywhere in some form or another: label and sort your tasks from A-C in terms of priority (A highest) and then by estimated time to complete them from shortest to longest. Do a few of the short ones, then a few of the long ones, rinse and repeat, that way you feel like you are making progress and don't get demotivated.
2. Don't over-optimise your workflow: you can spend all day making a to do list and making sure that it is 'at a glance understandable', that your emails arrive and are labelled, that your desk is neat and that your status reports are up-to-date. If you make this a task in itself it will be the only task you do!

TryHard

This morning going through my newsfeeds as my alter ego dataphage I found this article in Scientific American linked to. In essence it states that children see talent as the means to success and effort as pointless and not valuable at all. If they don?t achieve at the first attempt they will consider giving up or cheating to get good grades.

To my mind this is not just an American problem this is a part of westernised culture at large where individual brilliance is lauded more than enterprise and collective endeavour. Success is somehow supposed to effortlessly as the result of talent. This is an attitude I encounter in people my own age and younger (I?m 30). This is the way TryHard became a derogatory term and is probably the reason much of the under 30?s group seems to be so badly regarded by the other age groups at the moment. It is, I might add, almost certainly the result of an education system skewed by favouring individual achievement and talent to the detriment of the kind of skills you actually need in life.

*Climbs off soapbox*

The Wisdom of Crowds

I know a lot of people beleive in the Wisdom of Crowds but Mister Splashy Pants thinks it's more like the lowest common denominator.

How Bill Gates uses Office

Sometimes it's best to get it straight from the horses mouth:

Office Hours: How Bill Gates uses Office - Help and How-to - Microsoft Office Online

I've read articles before that suggest you can increase your productivity by a third by using a second screen, Bill uses 3. Note to PC sellers and employers: one screen is probably not enough any more!