Saturday, October 23, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Compensation committees: What HR needs to know
Canadian HR Reporter TV's Amanda Silliker sat down with Robert Lavasseur, senior consultant and principal with McDowall Associates in Toronto, to talk about the role of compensation committees, the challenges they face and what HR managers can do to have a successful relationship with compensation committees.
Future of Fund Management and Banks
Urgent ethical questions. Over the last decade I have lectured to thousands of fund managers from many different institutions including banks, responsible for hundreds of billions of actively managed investments, mainly entrusted to them by pension funds. The global economic crisis highlighted a number of fundamental problems within the industry, that had been there for many years, and remain unresolved. Issues such as over-charging, low performance, lack of confidence of fund managers in their own funds. Restoring trust has to be an urgent major priority. Without it, the industry as it is cannot survive. Wat ch keynote at Mercer client event.
Read more: Future of Fund Management and Banks
Supersize your PC. Play it all on your TV
Veebeam Overview from Veebeam on Vimeo.
Play Anything. Share Anything.
Veebeam is the easiest, most affordable way to wirelessly stream anything from your laptop to your TV.
It lets you combine the amazing video and audio performance of your current HDTV with the never-ending entertainment options available on your existing laptop.
It lets you share all your digital content with your family and friends.
Easy
When you’re ready to watch a movie, plug the USB antenna into your laptop and stream anything directly to your TV. It’s that simple.
Affordable
Starting at $99, Veebeam lets you make the most of your big HDTV and that new high capacity laptop…without breaking the bank.
Looks Great
Your digital media files will never look better than on your big HDTV. That’s because Veebeam outputs 1080p video.
Plays Anything
If your PC can play it, Veebeam can send it on your TV. From TV shows and movies from popular sites like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube to downloaded video and personal photos.
Secure wireless USB
Why use another wire to connect your TV and PC? Declutter your home, cut the cables, and simplify your life by going wireless.
Diminished Reality: Impressive Video Manipulation In Real-Time (Video)
Scary or cool? This technology developed by a team of researchers at Technische Universität Ilmenau in Germany is probably both. Their so-called “Diminished Reality” system makes it possible to manipulate video in real-time. As opposed to Augmented Reality, which adds virtual objects to real world images, Diminished Reality removes selected objects from video recordings.
The way it works is that first, the object to be eliminated from the footage has to be specified and detected. After that, the system analyzes the immediate surroundings of the object, for example the look of a table it was standing on, and fills out the empty space with that information.
According to the researchers behind this Diminished Reality application, this process just takes a few milliseconds and works both for video streams and static pictures.
This pretty impressive video provides more insight:
Change +: Tatyana Mamut, “Changing Daily Habits at Scale”
Change +: Tatyana Mamut, “Changing Daily Habits at Scale” from IDEO on Vimeo.
How can organizations spur system-wide changes in people’s daily habits? In the 1990s, Western businesses introduced new tools, rules, and norms to the Russian market to transform Russians’ hygiene habits, with great success. By examining this and other examples, a framework for changing behavior at the systemic or societal level emerges. While habits are indeed hard to break, seeing the challenge through the lens of an actionable framework can help organizations start successfully inspiring change in people’s daily choices.
http://vimeo.com/11517296
The Role of Design in Service Innovation
The Role of Design in Service Innovation from IDEO on Vimeo.
A talk by Axel Unger, Head of Health Practice, Europe, IDEO at the conference "Innovation in Healthcare Delivery", jointly hosted by the London Business School and the Cambridge Judge Business School on July 16th 2010 in London.
In his talk Axel argues how the role of design in innovation is not only about providing the right solutions and answers but is also about asking the right questions. He discusses how we need to be inspired, frame, evaluate iteratively and evolve innovative solutions, with strong user participation in the process.
The faces of tomorrow’s book
The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.
Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch IDEO’s vision for the future of the book. What new experiences might be created by linking diverse discussions, what additional value could be created by connected readers to one another, and what innovative ways we might use to tell our favorite stories and build community around books?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
TALKS - Ze Frank's web playroom
About this talk
On the web, a new "Friend" may be just a click away, but true connection is harder to find and express. Ze Frank presents a medley of zany Internet toys that require deep participation -- and reward it with something more nourishing. You're invited, if you promise you'll share
Every presentation needs this slide in it. (Laughter) It's beautiful, isn't it? Do you see? All the points, all the lines. It's incredible. It is the network. And in my case, the network has been important in media, because I get to connect to people. Isn't it amazing? Through that, I connect to people. And the way that I've been doing it has been multifaceted. For example, I get people to dress up their vacuum cleaners. (Laughter) I put together projects like Earth Sandwich, where I ask people to try and simultaneously place two pieces of bread perfectly opposite each other on the Earth. And people started laying bread in tribute, and eventually a team was able to do it between New Zealand and Spain. It's pretty incredible. The video's online. Connecting to people in projects like YoungmeNowme for example. In YoungmeNowme the audience was asked to find a childhood photograph of themselves and restage it as an adult. (Laughter) This is the same person -- top photo, James, bottom photo, [Jennifer]. Poignant. This was a Mother's Day gift. (Laughter) Particularly creepy. (Applause) (Laughter) My favorite of these photos, which I couldn't find, is there's a picture of a 30 year-old woman or so with a little baby on her lap, and the next photo is a 220-lb man with a tiny, little old lady peaking over his shoulder.
But this project changed the way that I thought about connecting to people. This is project called Ray. And what happened was I was sent this piece of audio and had no idea who generated the audio. Somebody said, "You have to listen to this." And this is what came to me.
Recording: Hi, my name is Ray, and on yesterday my daughter called me because she was stressed out because of things that were going on on her job that she felt was quite unfair. Being quite disturbed, she called for comfort, and I didn't really know what to tell her, because we have to deal with so much mess in our society. So I was led to write this song just for her, just to give her some encouragement while dealing with stress and pressures on her job. And I figured I'd put it on the Internet for all employees under stress to help you better deal with what you're going through on you job. Here's how the song goes.
♫ I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, if you don't leave me alone, ♫
♫ you gonna have to send me home ♫
♫ 'Cause I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
Now you might not be able to sing that out loud, but you can hum it to yourself, and you know what the words are. And let it give you some strength to get the next few moments on your job. All right. Stay strong. Peace.
Ze Frank: So -- Yeah. No, no, no, shush. We've got to go quickly. So I was so moved by this. This is incredible. This was connecting, right. This was, at a distance, realizing that someone was feeling something, wanting to affect them in a particular way, using media to do it, putting it online and realizing that there was a greater impact. This was incredible. This is what I wanted to do. So the first thing I thought of is we have to thank him. And I asked my audience, I said, "Listen to this piece of audio. We have to remix it. He's got a great voice. It's actually in the key of B flat. And have to do something with it." Hundreds of remixes came back -- lots of different attempts. One stood out in particular. It was done by a guy named Goose.
Remix: ♫ I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, if you don't leave me alone, ♫
♫ you gonna have to send me home ♫
♫ Cuz I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ I'm about to whip some ♫ --
ZF: Great. So it was incredible. That song -- (Applause) Thank you. So that song, somebody told me that it was at a baseball game in Kansas City. In the end, it was one of the top downloads on a whole bunch of music streaming services. And so I said, "Let's put this together in an album." And the audience came together, and they designed an album cover. And I said, "If you put it all on this, I'm going to deliver it to him, if you can figure out who this person is," because all I had was his name, Ray, and this little piece of audio and the fact that his daughter was upset. In two weeks, they found him. I received and email and it said, "Hi, I'm Ray. I heard you were looking for me." (Laughter) And I was like, "Yeah, Ray. It's been an interesting two weeks." And so I flew to St. Louis and met Ray, and he's a preacher. (Laughter) Among other things.
So but anyways, here's the thing, is it reminds me of this, which is a sign that you see in Amsterdam on every street corner. And it's sort of a metaphor for me for the virtual world. I look at this photo, and he seems really interested in what's going on with that button, but it doesn't seem like he is really that interested in crossing the street. (Laughter) And it makes me think of this. On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cellphones, and it's easy to to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is, life is being lived there. When they smile -- right, you've seen people stop -- all of a sudden, life is being lived there, somewhere up in that weird, dense network. And this is it, right, to feel and be felt. It's the fundamental force that we're all after. We can build all sorts of environments to make it a little bit easier, but ultimately, what we're trying to do is really connect with one other person. And that's not always going to happen in physical spaces. It's also going to now happen in virtual spaces, and we have to get better at figuring that out. I think, of the people that build all this technology in the network, a lot of them aren't very good at connecting with people. This is kind of like something I used to do in third grade.
(Laughter)
So here's a series of projects over the last few years where I've been inspired by trying to figure out how to really facilitate close connection. Sometimes they're very, very simple things. A Childhood Walk, which is a project where I ask people to remember a walk that they used to take as a child over and over again that was sort of meaningless, like on the route to the bus stop, to a neighbor's house, and take it inside of Google Streetview. And I promise you, if you take that walk inside Google Streetview, you come to a moment where something comes back and hits you in the face. And I collected those moments -- the photos inside Google Streetview and the memories, specifically. "Our conversation started with me saying, 'I'm bored,' and her replying, 'When I'm bored I eat pretzels.' I remember this distinctly because it came up a lot." "Right after he told me and my brother he was going to be separating from my mom, I remember walking to a convenience store and getting a cherry cola." "They used some of the morbidly artist footage, a close-up of Chad's shoes in the middle of the highway. I guess the shoes came off when he was hit. He slept over at my house once, and he left his pillow. It had 'Chad' written in magic marker on it. He died long after he left the pillow at my house, but we never got around to returning it."
Sometimes they're a little bit more abstract. This is Pain Pack. Right after September 11th, last year, I was thinking about pain and the way that we disperse it, the way that we excise it from our bodies. So what I did is I opened up a hotline, a hotline where people could leave voicemails of their pain, not necessarily related to that event. And people called in and left messages like this.
Recording: Okay, here's something. I'm not alone, and I am loved. I'm really fortunate. But sometimes I feel really lonely. And when I feel that way even the smallest act of kindness can make me cry. Like even people in convenience stores saying, "Have a nice day," when they're accidentally looking me in the eye.
ZF: So what I did was I took those voicemails, and with their permission, converted them to MP3s and distributed them to sound editors who created short sounds using just those voicemails. And those were then distributed to DJs who have made hundreds of songs using that source material. (Music) We don't have time to play much of it. You can look at it online.
"From 52 to 48 with love" was a project around the time of the last election cycle, where McCain and Obama both, in their speeches after the election, talked about reconciliation, and I was like, "What the hell does that look like?" So I thought, "Well let's just give it a try. Let's have people hold up signs about reconciliation." And so some really nice things came together. "I voted blue. I voted red. Together, for our future." These are very, very cute little things right. Some came from the winning party. "Dear 48, I promise to listen to you, to fight for you, to respect you always." Some came from the party who had just lost. "From a 48 to a 52, may your party's leadership be as classy as you, but I doubt it." But the truth was that as this start becoming popular, a couple rightwing blogs and some message boards apparently found it to be a little patronizing, which I could also see. And so I started getting amazing amounts of hate mail, death threats even. And one guy in particular kept on writing me these pretty awful messages, and he was dressed as Batman. And he said, "I'm dressed as Batman to hide my identity." Just in case I thought the real Batman was coming after me. Which actually made me feel a little better. Like, "Phew, it's not him."
So what I did -- unfortunately I was harboring all this kind of awful experience and this pain inside of me, and it started to eat away at my psyche. And I was protecting the project from it, I realized. I was protecting it. I didn't want this special, little group of photographs to get sullied in some way. So what I did, I took all those emails, and I put them together into something called Angrigami, which was an origami template made out of this sort of vile stuff. And I asked people to send me beautiful things made out of the Angrigami. (Laughter) But this was the emotional moment. One of my viewer's uncles died on a particular day, and he chose to commemorate it with a piece of hate. It's amazing.
The last thing I'm going to tell you about is a series of projects called Songs You Already Know, where the idea was, I was trying to figure out to address particular kinds of emotions with group projects. So one of them was fairly straightforward. A guy said that his daughter got scared at night and could I write a song for her, his daughter. And I said, oh yeah, I'll try to write a mantra that she can sing to herself to help herself go to sleep. And this was "Scared."
(Video) ♫ This is a song that I sing when I'm scared of something ♫
♫ I don't know why but it helps me get over it ♫
♫ The words of the song just move me along ♫
♫ And somehow I get over it ♫
♫ At least I don't suck at life ♫
♫ I keep on trying despite ♫
♫ At least I don't suck at life ♫
♫ I keep on trying despite ♫
♫ This is a song that I sing when I'm scared of something ♫
Okay, so I wrote that song, right. Thank you. So the nice thing was is he walked by his daughter's room at some point, and she actually was singing that song to herself. So I was like, "Awesome. This is great."
And then I got this email. And there's a little bit of a backstory to this. And I don't have much time. But the idea was that at one point I did a project called Facebook Me Equals You, where I wanted to experience what it was like to live as another person. So I asked for people's usernames and passwords to be sent to me. And I got a lot, like 30 in a half an hour. And I shut that part down. And I chose two people to be, and I asked them to send me descriptions of how to act as them on Facebook. One person sent me a very detailed description. The other person didn't. And the person who didn't, it turned out, had just moved to a new city and taken on a new job. So, you know, people were writing me and saying, "How's your new job?" I was like, "I don't know. Didn't know I had one."
But anyway, this same person, Laura, ended up emailing me a little bit after that project. And I felt badly for not having done a good job. And she said, "I'm really anxious, I just moved to a new town, I have this new job, and I've just had this incredible amount of anxiety." So she had seen the "Scared" song and wondered if I could do something. So I asked her, "What does it feel like when you feel this way?" And she wrote a sort of descriptive set of what it felt like to have had this anxiety. And so what I decided to do. I said, "Okay, I'll think about it." And so quietly in the background, I started sending people this.
(Audio) ♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
So I asked people whether they had basic audio capabilities, just so they could sing along to the song with headphones on, so I could just get their voices back. And this is the kind of thing that I got back.
Recording: ♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
ZF: So that's one of the better ones, really. But what's awesome is, as I started getting more and more and more of them, all of a sudden I had 30, 40 voices from around the world. And when you put them together, something magical happens, something absolutely incredible happens, and all of a sudden I get a chorus from around the world. And what was really great is, I'm putting all this work together in the background, and Laura sent me a follow-up email because a good month had passed by. And she said, "I know you've forgotten about me. I just want to say thanks for even considering it." And then a few days later I sent her this.
(Audio) ♫ Right now, it feels like I forgot to turn the light on ♫
♫ And things that looked so good yesterday ♫
♫ are now shades of gray ♫
♫ And it seems like the world is spinning ♫
♫ while I'm standing still ♫
♫ Or maybe I am spinning I can't tell ♫
♫ And then you say ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ And now the words sing ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Now everybody sings ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
Thank you.
(Applause)
On the web, a new "Friend" may be just a click away, but true connection is harder to find and express. Ze Frank presents a medley of zany Internet toys that require deep participation -- and reward it with something more nourishing. You're invited, if you promise you'll share
Every presentation needs this slide in it. (Laughter) It's beautiful, isn't it? Do you see? All the points, all the lines. It's incredible. It is the network. And in my case, the network has been important in media, because I get to connect to people. Isn't it amazing? Through that, I connect to people. And the way that I've been doing it has been multifaceted. For example, I get people to dress up their vacuum cleaners. (Laughter) I put together projects like Earth Sandwich, where I ask people to try and simultaneously place two pieces of bread perfectly opposite each other on the Earth. And people started laying bread in tribute, and eventually a team was able to do it between New Zealand and Spain. It's pretty incredible. The video's online. Connecting to people in projects like YoungmeNowme for example. In YoungmeNowme the audience was asked to find a childhood photograph of themselves and restage it as an adult. (Laughter) This is the same person -- top photo, James, bottom photo, [Jennifer]. Poignant. This was a Mother's Day gift. (Laughter) Particularly creepy. (Applause) (Laughter) My favorite of these photos, which I couldn't find, is there's a picture of a 30 year-old woman or so with a little baby on her lap, and the next photo is a 220-lb man with a tiny, little old lady peaking over his shoulder.
But this project changed the way that I thought about connecting to people. This is project called Ray. And what happened was I was sent this piece of audio and had no idea who generated the audio. Somebody said, "You have to listen to this." And this is what came to me.
Recording: Hi, my name is Ray, and on yesterday my daughter called me because she was stressed out because of things that were going on on her job that she felt was quite unfair. Being quite disturbed, she called for comfort, and I didn't really know what to tell her, because we have to deal with so much mess in our society. So I was led to write this song just for her, just to give her some encouragement while dealing with stress and pressures on her job. And I figured I'd put it on the Internet for all employees under stress to help you better deal with what you're going through on you job. Here's how the song goes.
♫ I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, if you don't leave me alone, ♫
♫ you gonna have to send me home ♫
♫ 'Cause I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
Now you might not be able to sing that out loud, but you can hum it to yourself, and you know what the words are. And let it give you some strength to get the next few moments on your job. All right. Stay strong. Peace.
Ze Frank: So -- Yeah. No, no, no, shush. We've got to go quickly. So I was so moved by this. This is incredible. This was connecting, right. This was, at a distance, realizing that someone was feeling something, wanting to affect them in a particular way, using media to do it, putting it online and realizing that there was a greater impact. This was incredible. This is what I wanted to do. So the first thing I thought of is we have to thank him. And I asked my audience, I said, "Listen to this piece of audio. We have to remix it. He's got a great voice. It's actually in the key of B flat. And have to do something with it." Hundreds of remixes came back -- lots of different attempts. One stood out in particular. It was done by a guy named Goose.
Remix: ♫ I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ Oh, if you don't leave me alone, ♫
♫ you gonna have to send me home ♫
♫ Cuz I'm about to whip somebody's ass ♫
♫ I'm about to whip some ♫ --
ZF: Great. So it was incredible. That song -- (Applause) Thank you. So that song, somebody told me that it was at a baseball game in Kansas City. In the end, it was one of the top downloads on a whole bunch of music streaming services. And so I said, "Let's put this together in an album." And the audience came together, and they designed an album cover. And I said, "If you put it all on this, I'm going to deliver it to him, if you can figure out who this person is," because all I had was his name, Ray, and this little piece of audio and the fact that his daughter was upset. In two weeks, they found him. I received and email and it said, "Hi, I'm Ray. I heard you were looking for me." (Laughter) And I was like, "Yeah, Ray. It's been an interesting two weeks." And so I flew to St. Louis and met Ray, and he's a preacher. (Laughter) Among other things.
So but anyways, here's the thing, is it reminds me of this, which is a sign that you see in Amsterdam on every street corner. And it's sort of a metaphor for me for the virtual world. I look at this photo, and he seems really interested in what's going on with that button, but it doesn't seem like he is really that interested in crossing the street. (Laughter) And it makes me think of this. On street corners everywhere, people are looking at their cellphones, and it's easy to to dismiss this as some sort of bad trend in human culture. But the truth is, life is being lived there. When they smile -- right, you've seen people stop -- all of a sudden, life is being lived there, somewhere up in that weird, dense network. And this is it, right, to feel and be felt. It's the fundamental force that we're all after. We can build all sorts of environments to make it a little bit easier, but ultimately, what we're trying to do is really connect with one other person. And that's not always going to happen in physical spaces. It's also going to now happen in virtual spaces, and we have to get better at figuring that out. I think, of the people that build all this technology in the network, a lot of them aren't very good at connecting with people. This is kind of like something I used to do in third grade.
(Laughter)
So here's a series of projects over the last few years where I've been inspired by trying to figure out how to really facilitate close connection. Sometimes they're very, very simple things. A Childhood Walk, which is a project where I ask people to remember a walk that they used to take as a child over and over again that was sort of meaningless, like on the route to the bus stop, to a neighbor's house, and take it inside of Google Streetview. And I promise you, if you take that walk inside Google Streetview, you come to a moment where something comes back and hits you in the face. And I collected those moments -- the photos inside Google Streetview and the memories, specifically. "Our conversation started with me saying, 'I'm bored,' and her replying, 'When I'm bored I eat pretzels.' I remember this distinctly because it came up a lot." "Right after he told me and my brother he was going to be separating from my mom, I remember walking to a convenience store and getting a cherry cola." "They used some of the morbidly artist footage, a close-up of Chad's shoes in the middle of the highway. I guess the shoes came off when he was hit. He slept over at my house once, and he left his pillow. It had 'Chad' written in magic marker on it. He died long after he left the pillow at my house, but we never got around to returning it."
Sometimes they're a little bit more abstract. This is Pain Pack. Right after September 11th, last year, I was thinking about pain and the way that we disperse it, the way that we excise it from our bodies. So what I did is I opened up a hotline, a hotline where people could leave voicemails of their pain, not necessarily related to that event. And people called in and left messages like this.
Recording: Okay, here's something. I'm not alone, and I am loved. I'm really fortunate. But sometimes I feel really lonely. And when I feel that way even the smallest act of kindness can make me cry. Like even people in convenience stores saying, "Have a nice day," when they're accidentally looking me in the eye.
ZF: So what I did was I took those voicemails, and with their permission, converted them to MP3s and distributed them to sound editors who created short sounds using just those voicemails. And those were then distributed to DJs who have made hundreds of songs using that source material. (Music) We don't have time to play much of it. You can look at it online.
"From 52 to 48 with love" was a project around the time of the last election cycle, where McCain and Obama both, in their speeches after the election, talked about reconciliation, and I was like, "What the hell does that look like?" So I thought, "Well let's just give it a try. Let's have people hold up signs about reconciliation." And so some really nice things came together. "I voted blue. I voted red. Together, for our future." These are very, very cute little things right. Some came from the winning party. "Dear 48, I promise to listen to you, to fight for you, to respect you always." Some came from the party who had just lost. "From a 48 to a 52, may your party's leadership be as classy as you, but I doubt it." But the truth was that as this start becoming popular, a couple rightwing blogs and some message boards apparently found it to be a little patronizing, which I could also see. And so I started getting amazing amounts of hate mail, death threats even. And one guy in particular kept on writing me these pretty awful messages, and he was dressed as Batman. And he said, "I'm dressed as Batman to hide my identity." Just in case I thought the real Batman was coming after me. Which actually made me feel a little better. Like, "Phew, it's not him."
So what I did -- unfortunately I was harboring all this kind of awful experience and this pain inside of me, and it started to eat away at my psyche. And I was protecting the project from it, I realized. I was protecting it. I didn't want this special, little group of photographs to get sullied in some way. So what I did, I took all those emails, and I put them together into something called Angrigami, which was an origami template made out of this sort of vile stuff. And I asked people to send me beautiful things made out of the Angrigami. (Laughter) But this was the emotional moment. One of my viewer's uncles died on a particular day, and he chose to commemorate it with a piece of hate. It's amazing.
The last thing I'm going to tell you about is a series of projects called Songs You Already Know, where the idea was, I was trying to figure out to address particular kinds of emotions with group projects. So one of them was fairly straightforward. A guy said that his daughter got scared at night and could I write a song for her, his daughter. And I said, oh yeah, I'll try to write a mantra that she can sing to herself to help herself go to sleep. And this was "Scared."
(Video) ♫ This is a song that I sing when I'm scared of something ♫
♫ I don't know why but it helps me get over it ♫
♫ The words of the song just move me along ♫
♫ And somehow I get over it ♫
♫ At least I don't suck at life ♫
♫ I keep on trying despite ♫
♫ At least I don't suck at life ♫
♫ I keep on trying despite ♫
♫ This is a song that I sing when I'm scared of something ♫
Okay, so I wrote that song, right. Thank you. So the nice thing was is he walked by his daughter's room at some point, and she actually was singing that song to herself. So I was like, "Awesome. This is great."
And then I got this email. And there's a little bit of a backstory to this. And I don't have much time. But the idea was that at one point I did a project called Facebook Me Equals You, where I wanted to experience what it was like to live as another person. So I asked for people's usernames and passwords to be sent to me. And I got a lot, like 30 in a half an hour. And I shut that part down. And I chose two people to be, and I asked them to send me descriptions of how to act as them on Facebook. One person sent me a very detailed description. The other person didn't. And the person who didn't, it turned out, had just moved to a new city and taken on a new job. So, you know, people were writing me and saying, "How's your new job?" I was like, "I don't know. Didn't know I had one."
But anyway, this same person, Laura, ended up emailing me a little bit after that project. And I felt badly for not having done a good job. And she said, "I'm really anxious, I just moved to a new town, I have this new job, and I've just had this incredible amount of anxiety." So she had seen the "Scared" song and wondered if I could do something. So I asked her, "What does it feel like when you feel this way?" And she wrote a sort of descriptive set of what it felt like to have had this anxiety. And so what I decided to do. I said, "Okay, I'll think about it." And so quietly in the background, I started sending people this.
(Audio) ♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
So I asked people whether they had basic audio capabilities, just so they could sing along to the song with headphones on, so I could just get their voices back. And this is the kind of thing that I got back.
Recording: ♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
ZF: So that's one of the better ones, really. But what's awesome is, as I started getting more and more and more of them, all of a sudden I had 30, 40 voices from around the world. And when you put them together, something magical happens, something absolutely incredible happens, and all of a sudden I get a chorus from around the world. And what was really great is, I'm putting all this work together in the background, and Laura sent me a follow-up email because a good month had passed by. And she said, "I know you've forgotten about me. I just want to say thanks for even considering it." And then a few days later I sent her this.
(Audio) ♫ Right now, it feels like I forgot to turn the light on ♫
♫ And things that looked so good yesterday ♫
♫ are now shades of gray ♫
♫ And it seems like the world is spinning ♫
♫ while I'm standing still ♫
♫ Or maybe I am spinning I can't tell ♫
♫ And then you say ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ And now the words sing ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Now everybody sings ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
♫ Hey ♫
♫ You're okay ♫
♫ You'll be fine ♫
♫ Just breathe ♫
Thank you.
(Applause)
| Ray - Whipass goose remix .mp3 | ||
 | ||
 | Found at bee mp3 search engine |  |
Schiff vs. Henwood on Economic Crisis
Schiff vs. Henwood on Economic Crisis
Free market guru Peter Schiff debates Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer on causes and solutions
Free market guru Peter Schiff debates Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer on causes and solutions
French Students Protest Pension Bill
pp
Newsy: On the eve of a major vote regarding France’s new pension bill, student protests ran rampant
Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com
Newsy: On the eve of a major vote regarding France’s new pension bill, student protests ran rampant
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Mandelbrot Set // Jonathan Coulton Sings "Still Alive"
A music video for Jonathan Coulton's song Mandelbrot Set by Pisut Wisessing made in Film 324: Cornell Summer Animation Workshop, taught by animator Lynn Tomlinson every summer for Cornell's summer session, in the department of Theatre, Film & Dance.
Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness (2 hours)
Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness
October 4, 2006
Tal Ben-Shahar instructor, psychology, Harvard
Tal Ben-Shahar discusses current research on the science of happiness and introduces ideas and tools that can actually make a difference in one's life.
The study of happiness or of enhancing the quality of our lives, has been dominated by pop-psychology (much charisma, but relatively little substance) and academia (much substance, but isolated from most people's everyday lives). Positive Psychology, the scientific study of optimal human functioning, creates a bridge between the Ivory Tower and Main Street, making rigorous academic ideas accessible to all. Tal Ben-Shahar, instructor of the most popular course at Harvard University, discusses the findings of current research on the science of happiness and introduces ideas and tools that can actually make a difference in one's life.
Jigokudani Monkey Park,
Baby Japanese Macaque clings to parent in hot spring, Jigokudani Monkey Park, Hokkaido, Japan
Interview with Tal Ben-Shahar 29:23
Tal Ben-Shahar is an author and lecturer at Harvard University. He currently teaches the largest course at Harvard on "Positive Psychology" and the third largest on "The Psychology of Leadership"--with a total of over 1,400 students.
Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporation, the general public, and at-risk populations. Topics include happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership.
An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships. He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behavior and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.
Interview with Tal Ben-Shahar
Full Interview 29:23
Other Ideas from Ben-Shahar
Write It Down: My Best Career Advice
An Im-perfectionists Takes on Career Mistakes
How to Fail Well
The Science of Optimal Love
What Keeps Tal Ben-Shahar Up At Night
Five Ways to Become Happier Today
Do We Ever Have a Right to Be Miserable?
The Corporate Guide to Happiness
Happiness: The Opiate of the People?
Is Facebook Making Us Sad?
Psychology That Doesn’t Care What’s Wrong With You
In Defense of Self-Help
Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporation, the general public, and at-risk populations. Topics include happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership.
An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships. He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behavior and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.
Interview with Tal Ben-Shahar
Full Interview 29:23
Other Ideas from Ben-Shahar
Write It Down: My Best Career Advice
An Im-perfectionists Takes on Career Mistakes
How to Fail Well
The Science of Optimal Love
What Keeps Tal Ben-Shahar Up At Night
Five Ways to Become Happier Today
Do We Ever Have a Right to Be Miserable?
The Corporate Guide to Happiness
Happiness: The Opiate of the People?
Is Facebook Making Us Sad?
Psychology That Doesn’t Care What’s Wrong With You
In Defense of Self-Help
Is Facebook Making Us Sad?
Facebook and Twitter, by making our lives increasingly public, make avoiding the dangerous drive towards perfectionism difficult. Tal Ben-Shahar explains why.
http://bigthink.com/talbenshahar
The Mind Body Connection
How does our mind work with our bodies? Learn from the Harvard professor, Dr. Tal Ben Shahar
Gratitude
Tal Ben-Shahar gets away with teaching happiness at Harvard.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Tal Ben-Shahar | ||||
| ||||
Tal Ben-Shahar
Jon is amazed that professor Tal Ben-Shahar gets away with teaching happiness at Harvard.
Tal Ben-Shahar is an author and lecturer at Harvard University. He taught the most popular course at Harvard on "Positive Psychology" and the third largest on "The Psychology of Leadership"--with a total of over 1,400 students.
Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporation, the general public, and at-risk populations. Topics include happiness, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, mindfulness, and leadership.
An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships. He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behavior and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.
HAPPY CONFERENCE 2009, Impacting Wellness in Organizations
Monday, October 18, 2010
Watch live streaming video from facebookinnovations at livestream.com
Watch live streaming video from facebookinnovations at livestream.com
The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets
In an interview with WSJ's Alan Murray, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell conceded that advertisers must do better to inform customers about the tracking and mapping of online behavior. On the U.S. economy, he characterized the last 6-7 months as "America Bites Back" but wonders how long the recovery will last.
Facebook in Privacy Breach
Facebook says it is taking steps to "dramatically limit" the exposure of users' personal information, after a WSJ investigation showed that personal IDs were being transmitted to third parties via Facebook apps. But how hard is it to fix such a breach - and how concerned should users be about the sharing of these IDs? Julia Angwin joins Digits to discuss.
Many top applications on Facebook have been transmitting identifying information to Internet tracking and ad companies. Emily Steel discusses. Also, Michael Ramsey discusses skepticism about the auto industry's big bet that battery-powered cars will become big sellers.
It's rarely a coincidence when you see Web ads for products that match your interests. WSJ's Christina Tsuei explains how advertisers use cookies to track your online habits.
A new report in the Wall Street Journal's "What They Know" series illustrates how companies like Microsoft must balance conflicting interests: helping people surf the Web with its browser to keep their mouse clicks private, and helping advertisers who want to see those clicks. WSJ's Julia Angwin, Nick Wingfield, and Jessica Vascellaro join host Simon Constable as panelists on this special Digits live show.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Watch Startup School on October 16th
Watch live video from Startup School on Justin.tv
great to see the Facebook creators tell his true story and how he did it.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Point Presentation – The Rational Pursuit of Change
Tried to fit a ton of content in 14 minutes, so its a bit fast – enjoy!
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Andrew Mason. Andrew shared his ideas for his startup ThePoint.com
ActionsTalk #3 - Andrew Mason - ThePoint.com from ActionsTalk on Vimeo.
The Loving Parent from The Point on Vimeo.
Frustrated Consumer from The Point on Vimeo.
Artist Scenario from The Point on Vimeo.
Concerned Citizen from The Point on Vimeo.
The Under-appreciated Employee from The Point on Vimeo.
Take your campaign anywhere.Our powerful widget allows you to take your campaign anywhere, including your website, blog, or social networks like MySpace. By copy/pasting a single line of code, people can join your campaign without ever leaving your site.The campaign widget makes it easy for existing communities to leverage the power of The Point by taking campaigns to all the places where like-minded people exist.
Cheburashka / Чебурашка - 1/7
Cheburashka (Russian: ru-Cheburashka.ogg Чебурашка (help·info)), also known as Topple in earlier English translations, is a character in children's literature, from a 1966 story by the Russian writer Eduard Uspensky. He is also the protagonist (voiced by Klara Rumyanova) of the animated film series by Soyuzmultfilm studio, the first episode of which was made in 1969.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Skype 5.0 For Windows Debuts With Facebook Integration, Call Recovery And More
A brand new version of Skype for Windows, which will help bring you and your friends, family and co-workers together like never before.
Eric Schmidt speaks at IFA
Eric Schmidt speaks at IFA 2010 on September 7, 2010 in Berlin. The talk includes demos of mobile features by Product Management Director Hugo Barra and of Google TV by Product Marketing Manager Brittany Bohnet.
Posterous iPhone App Will Make You Finally Get A Posterous
At least it did me. Touted by co-founder Sachin Agarwal as a one stop shop for all your sharing needs, the Posterous app (now available in the App store) is extremely intuitive to use, and you don’t even need a Posterous to use it to start uploading photos, video and text, which, if you’ve enabled the Posterous “Autopost” feature will also post to your Facebook, Twitter as well as 26 other social sites including Flickr, YouTube, WordPress, Vimeo and Tumblr.
While you might be experiencing iPhone share fatigue (Instagram, Twitter, Tumblrette, WordPress and many others allow you to upload content directly from your phone) Posterous has always modeled itself on providing its pretty fanatical userbase with ease of use, the original idea of the service being that you could send an email to post@posterous.com and get a blog back, to which you the could send any other subsequent posts to post@sitename.posterous.com.
The Posterous mobile app takes off on this basic “no need to log in” philosophy, but supports geolocational tags, category tags and various levels of editing and privacy. And despite being buggy at points (one of my test posts posted twice, which was confusing), it’s pretty impressive how much you can actually do from the app (for example I set up my whole Posterous account) as opposed to WordPress, which has the effect of making you feel immobilized when blogging on the go because it does not allow you to upload media other than photos and lacks social sharing functions.
Winning “Keep It Simple Stupid” product strategy aside, it’s really hard not to root for the YC-backed Posterous; Their recent skuffle with Twitpic solidified them as champions of user portability which is always a crowd pleaser. Their user traffic has also risen accordingly boasting a 40% increase since June.
Currently funded at $5.14 million, Posterous’ future plans for the iPhone app include building the ability to directly edit posts from the app, landscape post viewing, multiple photo selection and showing attachments as actual thumbnails.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The 33 Questions | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
Jeffrey Tucker interviews bestselling author and Mises Institute Senior Fellow, Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. They discuss his recent blockbuster "33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask."
Edning FR - The Great Awakening
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
