The Technic Alley

Here is an interesting “nudge” that I noticed near my local school recently. On one of the bigger streets adjacent to the school, the “School 25 MPH” sign tends to get ignored by many drivers; probably some larger signs would help. There is one particular intersection that gets really busy just before school time in the mornings. So there are volunteers policing traffic every morning, trying to ensure that the kids and the adults walking them to school cross the streets safely.

Recently, I noticed that someone has come up with a very effective idea to slow down the speeding drivers on the busy street. Every morning, there are three orange rubber cones placed across the street, along the crosswalk. Two of these are at the edge of the street, touching the curb. The third is exactly in the middle of the crosswalk, at the road-divider line. So, none of these cones directly impede traffic in any way — they don’t block any of the lanes. Yet, just being placed visibly along the crosswalk seems to remind all the drivers about the school zone and nudges them to slow down and look for people trying to cross the street.

Have you thought of a feature or an application that you wished your PC or Notebook  supported? What if you could design it yourself?

WePC.com is a social network that was recently launched by Intel and Asus, aimed at giving users an opportunity to share their ideas and insights on future designs as well as vote on some product ideas.

The intro page says:

“Imagine your perfect PC. Now imagine top engineers and innovators working around the clock to make that Dream PC a reality. That’s the dream WePC.com is all about.”

Sounds interesting? You can sign up for an account and join many others in the pursuit of creating your perfect PC.  You can share ideas about your dream PC, or create a description of it. You can view dozens of selected ideas and vote on them. Then there is a community-blog where you can talk about your ideas, your dreams products and gripes about existing ones,  and comment on others’ posts.

Does it really work? Apparently, it does; there are thousands of ideas for you to look at and vote on. And the number seems to be growing.

Why does it work? Presumably, there are tons of people who have good ideas that they would like to see implemented and developed into products, but don’t have the resources to do it on their own. So here they are, driving innovation by sharing their ideas with companies that are eager to listen, and find some hot ideas and features to stay ahead in their game.

This is another perfect example of what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “maven-trap” in his book The Tipping Point: a free forum that gives you the tools to create and share your product ideas, vote on others’ ideas and discuss them with other like-minded people. To a lot of people, that’s highly motivating.

This is likely to become a trend not just in the computer industry, but any other consumer-oriented industry as well: automotive, appliances, entertainment, toys and other kids’ products, etc. Would that be a win-win situation for the consumers and the producers? At the outset, it promises to be.

Would there be any challenges? How does it affect patenting? Won’t all competing companies have access to ideas being discussed in each other’s forums? What does it mean to them? Does this create a level playing field for ideas and innovation that’s accessible to everyone, and thus force companies to compete only on the basis “time-to-market,” i.e.,  how quickly they can translate these ideas into real products?

Those are questions for the lawyers to scratch their heads about, but I suspect that the mavens frequenting these forums wouldn’t want to waste their time on such boring issues.

“How many miles can I drive on a gallon of gasoline?”

“How many gallons of gasoline do I need to travel 10,000 miles?”

Is there anything fundamentally different in these two questions?

Consider the following examples:

Let’s say you drive 10,000 miles in a year on an average. If you have a car that gives you 10 miles-per-gallon (MPG), then you would need
1,000 gallons of gas every year. If the price-per-gallon is $3, then you would spend $3,000 in a year on gas.

Now, if you changed to a car that gives you 20 MPG, then you would get twice as many miles per gallon, costing you 500 gallons, and so you would spend $1,500 per year on gas.  And if you bought a car that gives you 40 MPG, then you would spend $750 per year.

As you can see, changing from a car that gives 10 MPG to 20 MPG saves  you about $1500 of gas in a year, but going from 20 MPG to 40 MPG only saves you about $750.

So, if you think in terms of MPG, a car that gives 20 MPG is twice as good as the one that gives you 10 MPG, one that gives 40 is twice as good as the one that gives you 20. But when you look at it from the perspective of cost per mile, or GPM, you save significantly more when you change from 10 MPG to 20 MPG, than when you change from 20 MPG to 40 MPG.

Watch this video from The MPG Illusion guys.

Do you have a Picasa Web Album and would like to share it on your Facebook profile? You can use the Picasa Gallery Slideshow application on Facebook. Here is how to set it up:

1. Install the Picasa Gallery Slideshow application on Facebook.
2. Log in to Picasa and open the album that you want to create the slideshow for.
3. Click on “Link to this album.”
   • You will see some HTML code in a box below the words “Paste HTML to embed in website.” Copy this to your Facebook Picasa Gallery.
   • You will also see a link that says “Embed Slideshow.” Clicking on that pops up a window. You will find some Javascript code. Copy this code and paste it into your Facebook Picasa Gallery.
4. Visit your Facebook profile. You should see an embedded graphic link to your Picasa Album, probably inside your “Boxes” menu. You can move it to your wall if you wish.

In his book “Blink,” Malcolm Gladwell describes an experiment where a store that offered over twenty different types of jam sold significantly less jam than another store that offered only six. Gladwell’s explanation for this is that when we are presented with too many choices, we get a lot of information to process and make a “rational choice.” That makes it harder to decide and we end up putting off making a choice.

In another experiment where students are asked to rank jams, they make choices that are consistent with experts’ when they are just asked to rank. But when they are asked to rank and also explain why they ranked the jams that way, their choices are almost random.

Gladwell explains both the above results by arguing that our ability to make a choice or decision in the blink of an eye using our “adaptive unconcious” or gut feeling is hampered by providing too much information. Our conscious mind collects all the available data and starts to process it — sorting it, comparing different attributes, pros and cons — and in the process often loses essence of what is needed to make a choice. For example, it would be easier for the students to say “I ranked this as the best jam because this tasted the best,” than to provide a rational explanation taking into account the taste, the texture, the smell and many other such attributes.

When you go to the store to buy a new TV, it would be easier to decide which particular model meets your requirements if there were say five to choose from, compared to twenty. When you are shown too many choices, your attention is drawn to features that you hadn’t thought about — and probably not important to you — and you end up starting all over and trying to decide what kind of TV do you really need. Often, you get so overwhelmed that you decide to think it over and leave the store. So it would make sense for the stores to pick a few good models of TV and only display them.

But today we shop online for a lot of things that we buy. So even if all the stores’ websites offered a small number of choices, we can browse through all of them very quickly, compared to driving from store to store. This article in Science Daily titled “Consumers Stop Buying As Number Of Options Increase” talks about this very effect.

That is probably why many online stores encourage customers to write reviews. A prospective buyer has to scan a large number of choices and make a decision, but the reviews from earlier buyers are likely to eliminate some of the choices, while highlighting some others as “good buys.” To some extent, the reviews reduce the effect of overwhelming the shopper with too many choices.

But if you end up finding too many reviews to read, which ones do you consider for making your choice?

That was Microsoft’s famous slogan some years ago, but very soon that may be the question your car asks you, as soon as you get in and buckle up.

“Innovation comes ‘Standard’” claims Microsoft in a recent press release about its new Auto 4.0 platform that was announced at the CeBit and Embedded World conferences, during the first week of March.

Calling it “the next wave of automotive business,” the article says:

“The upcoming release of the Microsoft Auto software platform will be available to automakers and suppliers this spring. This will be the most comprehensive release ever, and will expand its hardware support to include Intel® Architecture processors. In this wave, Microsoft is also unveiling a new worldwide partner programme, including platform training partners to provide technical education on Microsoft Auto to help automakers and suppliers deliver the next innovations in vehicle infotainment, navigation and communication devices.”

The Microsoft Auto Platform aims to provide a common head unit functionality including a standard interface for radio tuners, CD players, etc. Companies like Navigon, Elektrobit and Continental AG plan to advance their navigation systems and other aids to provide the driver with real-time information.  One-shot destination entry, recognition of multiple commands in a single-phrase, in-dash internet connectivity and wireless connectivity are some of the features that we might be seeing in cars of the near future.

“The automotive industry is at an inflection point, where software plus services will redefine the future of the in-vehicle experience, and innovation is the new currency,”

says Tom Phillips, general manager of the Microsoft Automotive Business Unit.

“The challenge facing automakers is how to quickly and affordably bring innovative in-car solutions and services to their customers. The Microsoft Auto platform is the critical component to meet that challenge.”

The Microsoft Auto 4.0 will also support  the Intel Architecture processors, including the Atom Z5xx series, in addition to the ARM- and SH-based processors that were previously supported.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

by Malcolm Gladwell

This is Malcolm Gladwell’s second book after “The Tipping Point.”  In The Tipping Point, Gladwell writes about how sometimes things considered little and insignificant can unexpectedly cause big changes. Blink is about something very different; it is about how much information processing is done by our mind at a subconscious level, and how it can give us incredible answers in the blink of an eye.

Gladwell explains how we are quite unaware of the powers of our subconscious mind that works like a supercomputer behind the scenes. Every time we are faced with a challenge or a predicament, we try to use our conscious mind and think. For many day-to-day problems, we have  access to enough information and intelligence in that part of our mind and we solve them. But very often, we come across situations for which we can’t find answers in our conscious mind. Yet, we often act quickly in a crisis and avert a disaster by doing precisely the appropriate thing; Gladwell attributes this to our “adaptive unconscious” that processes an enormous amout of information in a flash and guides us to the correct action.

The books starts with a story about a museum that acquired a “rare piece of art” — a statue — from an individual after appointing a team to study it and verify its authenticity for over a year. Soon after, several art experts visiting the museum instinctively react with shock and repulsion. By taking just one look at it, they sense something wrong, something out of place. As it turns out, the museum does further investigation which confirms that the statue is indeed a fake. How did visiting art experts sense that the statue was not genuine within seconds of looking at it, while another team of experts concluded otherwise after a year-long study? Gladwell’s argument is that the experts who just looked at it for a moment had their adaptive unconscious working in their favor, while the team that studied it for long had reams and reams of documentation — too much information — that clouded their judgement. The visiting art experts did what Gladwell calls “thin slicing” — their minds focused on some critical aspects of the visual data when they looked at the statue, and fitered out the irrelevant.

Another interesting experiment that Gladwell describes illustrates a similar effect on reasoning. A group of young students are given about half-a-dozen brands of jam to taste, and asked to rank them. When compared with how a group of jam experts ranked them, the students’ ratings are almost identical. Next, another group of students are given the exact same task, but this time, they are asked to rank the jams, and also describe why they ranked them that way. This time, the students’ ratings are way off from the experts’ ratings. Gladwell’s explanation is that when the first group of students were asked to just taste the jams and rank them, they did it instinctively, but when the second group was asked to justify their rankings, their conscious minds tried to use reasoning for a task that they were not trained for, leading to almost random results. When people are presented with a lot of information and asked to make choices using all the information, they often get overwhelmed and make poor judgements. The author also alludes to another experiment where a store offering six types of jams sells much more jam than a store that offered twenty-four different types; having too many choices confuses people and often makes them postpone making a choice.

The book covers many other situations that show how trying to provide our conscious minds with a lot of information and expecting it to make quick decisions is often futile. Gladwell writes about how doctors in emergency rooms can get overwhelmed by patients who seem to have signs and symptoms of impending heart-attack, and feel compelled to admit them all to be kept under observation. He then explains how one doctor formulated a three-key-symptoms rule that allowed the doctors to focus on three necessary symptoms that would warrant immediate treatment or close observation, and not to be overloaded with other information and symptoms that were only adding to the confusion.

Another aspect of “blink of an eye” judgements that we all make are based on visual clues that our unconscious mind is collecting constantly, and we are not aware of. There is an interesting chapter that delves into facial micro-expressions and how they combine to form various complex expressions. These are visual clues that we all use when interpreting someone’s talk or actions, without being conscious about them. Gladwell cites experts who use  video tapes from court scenes, teachers in classrooms, and couples having a conversation, and their incredible conclusions, based on very specific expressions and other body language.

Gladwell also points out that there are cases when our adaptive unconscious can lead us astray. Our snap judgements can be clouded by our prejudices or by how we are primed at a given point in time, he writes. He explains how the Implicit Association Tests illustrate our bias towards various things in life. “Sensation transference” is another interesting psychological effect discussed in the book.

This book is packed with many examples, anecdotes and interesting observations. I listened to the audio version twice and flipped through the print version a few times before attempting  to write this review.

Working from home using Telepresence can be greener than you’d imagine!

From Dilbert.com Feb, 22, 2009.

I found this cool video demonstrating how to build a Wii-like remote control using Mindstorms NXT sensors. This project uses the compass and acceleration sensors that are not part of the standard NXT kit, but can be purchased separately. RobotC is the language used for programming. 

Click here to view it in the original page if you can’t play the video above. This YouTube video is by tingeypa.

In my post Irrational Economics, I quoted some surprising observations from an article in The Atlantic titled “Dismal scientists: how the crash is reshaping economics.” I wrote:

“What the article says is that a lot of the economics theories that are being used today haven’t advanced at all in the past 80 years or so. While some of these could have been very relevant in 1920s and 1930s, they are probably completely out of place in today’s context.”

Today, while browsing the Freakonomics blog, a post titled On the Failure of Macroeconomists caught my eye. The author Justin Wolfers writes:

“If you took your first economics class 50 years ago, you’ll recognize all this talk about marginal propensities, multipliers, and crowding out. Fifty years later, it’s still the same debate, and it’s still unresolved. Why are we so reliant on mid-century macro for understanding our current predicament? And why haven’t we developed better answers?”

Wolfers describes what his research found: there were typically about three times the number of research papers on  monetary policy,  compared to those on fiscal policy. What does this mean? This seems to suggest that while there was a lot of study on how the government and the central bank controls the supply of money, interest rates, etc., and its outcomes, there wasn’t as much study on government spending and taxation. Why this disparity? Wolfers speculates:

“Perhaps the problem is ideology, and pro-market economists don’t like any discussion that gives government a greater role. Or perhaps there are just too many temptations for young economists — monetary policy research pays off because there’s a comfortable career path running from monetary research to the money markets.

Another possibility is research funding: there are 12 regional Federal Reserve banks subsidizing research on monetary policy, and almost no one provides similar subsidies for fiscal research.”

This is something for the economics experts to debate, and far beyond what a layperson like me can comprehend. But if this is true, this would be a good example of how skewed educational funding can lead to disastrous long-term effects on a large scale.