I guess we all know what’s good for ourselves (or our friends and relations, or our community, or the world) – but we still keep on acting against this knowledge most of the time – or sometimes at least. That’s perfectly ok of course, but one cause for this are habits, which are burned into our nervous system and make us repeat the same patterns again and again.

But I just want to tell a little story:

a few days ago I had a fracture in a bone of my right hand, and currently the only finger left to be used is my thumb. Well, this is not the worst thing that can happen to you in your life, still I felt miserably the first day, and on the second day I was really depressed, but on the third day I started to develop little hacks/workarounds for various tasks.

However and switch of subject: I drink way too much coffee. I have one of these italian stove-top Espresso Machines, and when I wake up in the morning I automagically find myself preparing and sipping coffee, and then various times more throughout the day. I don’t think I’m addicted (every addict claims this), but it’s a habit. I tried to drink less coffee various times without success, so I just went with the flow.

But since I only have my left hand available, this behavioural pattern changed. It’s still the first thing I do in the morning, but during the rest of the day I started to drink tea instead. I had no intention to drink less coffee this time, it is just a little bit too cumbersome to prepare it. I bought a variety of herbal, black and green teas in bags (I hear all Brits unsubscribe now), and it’s just much more convenient – and actually a pleasure for the senses.

My takeaway (and note to self, I hope to expermiment with this theme a little bit in the future) from this is: if you want to break a habit, try to artificially raise the effort and/or the costs for doing it. Everyone’s mileage varies of course, but we are pretty versatile actually, and we will readjust and start living smarter.

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Comments:
You poor old chap, now a few cells in the other half of your brain are beginning to come to life. A very good training for “life balance”, just think of it as a sort of Tai Chi Hack, exploring the dark side of the moon…
posted by pps : 11/16/2005 04:10:11 PM

… and don’t feel so bad about the tea bags. Fact: 90% of british tea drinkers use tea bags! Another myth goes pop!
posted by pps : 11/16/2005 07:13:31 PM

Today Gather [gather.com] launched. Gather is a next generation user generated content community and exploit with a nice set of social networking and collaborative filtering features.

Registered users can publish articles and Gather provides various layers of visibility for those:

• Editors’ Picks
• Browse By Topic
• Top Rated Articles (content quality)
• Most Read Authors (reputation)
• gee, there are Tags
• Popular Topics
• Recent Articles and Comments

I didn’t try it yet, and there are tons of (social) features inside, so you might want to check out the Gather Lingo and the comprehensive review by Robin Good.

del.icio.us today added tagrolls [del.icio.us/help/tagrolls], which let you to display your del.icio.us tags on your blog or website.

There are a few settings you can play with:

del.icio.us tagcloud options

What I’m missing is a way to exclude specific tags.

Related: Tag clouds are the new mullets

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Comments:
Has anyone figured out a way to exclude a specific tag yet? Once we can do that, then this is just killer for Blogger.
posted by Leroy Brown : 1/07/2006 07:07:16 AM

So Fotolia – a marketplace for photos targeting the long tail – launched yesterday, TechCrunch has the story.

It’s interesting to compare the top 150 tags photographers use to describe a photo:

abstract adult animal architecture art asian attractive autumn background beach beautiful beauty black blue body boy bright brown brunette building business child children christmas city close close-up closeup clouds color colorful colors colour computer concept cute dark decoration design detail diet drink eat eyes face fall farm fashion female field flora flower flowers food forest fresh fruit fun garden girl glass gold grass green hair hand happy head health healthy holiday home hot house isolated kid lady landscape leaf leaves life light love macro male man metal model money natural nature nutrition object ocean office old orange outdoor outdoors over white paper park pattern people person pink plant play portrait pose power pretty red reflection round sand sea season seasonal sexy shadow sign skin sky smile smiling spring stone summer sun sunset sweet symbol tasty technology teen texture travel tree trees vacation water white winter woman women wood work yellow young

with top 150 tags of the most searched photos:

3d animal apple art asian australia autumn baby background ball baseball beach bear beauty bee bikini bird black blue body bottle boy breast bridge building buildings business butterfly camera car cars cat child children china christmas church city coffee computer corn couple dog door erotic eye eyes face fall family female fire fireworks fish flag flower flowers food forest frog fruit girl girls glass globe green hair halloween hand heart horse hot house ice india italy japan kids kiwi lake lamp landscape laptop leaf leaves legs light london love man men money moscow mushroom naked nature new night nude office old orange paper paris people peppers phone photo pictures pool pumpkin pussy rain red rose russia sand santa sea seagull sex sexy sign singapore sky smile snow soccer sun sunflower sunset sushi swan teen tiger tits tower train tree wall water wedding white wine winter wolf woman women work york

AFAIK this is the first service which contrasts these two perspectives (the authors seem to have a more poetic notion, the users seem to search for nouns mostly). I wonder if these clouds approximate over time.

(translated version from this pic from a chinese photo-sharing site – and only funny if you are from Austria, but I’d love to find out what this is about)

btw.: if you are interested in the Chinese Web2-ohsphere, check out Rebecca MacKinnon’s Chinese Bloggers: Everybody is Somebody

The Chinese economy functions today (to the extent that it does) thanks largely to personal relationship networks: networks that enable people to get stuff done despite bone-headed regulations, politics, logistical obstacles, and everything else. You are nothing in China and can accomplish very little without a good ‘guanxi’ network. Expect Chinese internet users to seize upon Web 2.0 tools as a way to expand and deepen their human relationships, enhancing both personal lives and businesses. Expect Chinese users build new tools that suit their own preferred ways of communication. The Chinese are likely to have a growing impact on the evolution of web applications.

It’s a little known fact that people have been podcasting already a hundred years ago. They weren’t subscribed to RSS or Atom feeds then but to théâtrophone networks, and they used their telephones instead of mobile MP3 players to listen to the shows, yet there was a flourishing phonecasting scene in many major cities around the world.

Zoe Irvine’s Dial-a-Diva – an event spanning the globe for 24 hours, connecting singers and listeners live by telephone – is a lovely project remembering these pioneers but also reflecting current telephonic soundscapes:

In today’s culture of telephony besides having a chat on the phone, distant outsourced call centres bring customer services to clients as if they were down the road, the latest hits are translated to polyphonic ring tones, we spend hours speaking to synthesised voices to get train times, we listen to music on hold whether we like it or not and we broadcast in intimate detail our lives down the phone and the train for all to hear and occasionally at a concerts, lifting the handset towards the band we let one not present participate in the event, for a highly compressed moment at least.

The basic principle of a wiki is a shared space that anyone can edit. This simple idea is based on collaboration and communication and has generated fantastic stuff.

Recently (BlinkBits) and forthcoming (Squidoo – currently in private beta) two applications launched, which take the concept of the shared space, but tweak the notion of how the content is generated:

(screenshot from Seth Godin’s sample lens)

Squidoo [squidoo.com] takes a kind of free information markets driven approach (darwinian visibility of the best/most informative), a shared space of monads (lenses) that anyone can create, but only the ‘lensmaster’ can author.

From the blog:

Wikipedia has a system with one entry per topic. We don’t. Instead, we encourage multiple lenses on a topic. Then, we use an automated algorithm to rank the lenses. We look at user ratings, lensmaster reputation, clickthrough rates, frequency of updates and other factors and give the lens a number. And we make it clear to the lensmaster what her rank is and how to improve it. If we do our job right, every time you do a search, we’ll choose the best lens from among the relevant matches and show it to you. Of course, it’s easy for a surfer to see all the lenses, not just the highest ranked one.

BlinkBits [blinkbits.com] takes a cummulative approach. Once a ‘blink’ for a concept is created, it aggregates quite a variety of sources and anyone can add content (links, comments, notes, etc.) in an unfiltered way.

It will be interesting to see how they will affect our information ecosystem.

Just a pointer to two interesting applications/services that seem to make a web 2.0 savvy use of decentralized structures:

Fundable is a site for raising money for a variety of use cases (both charitable or philanthropic and commercial) like:

Split the cost of something big
Pool money for birthday gifts, real estate, parties, shared items, etc.
Buy a product in bulk to save money
Raise money for a personal project from friends
Collect dues ahead of time and eliminate excuses
Avoid getting stuck covering costs when someone in the group doesn’t pay.
Confirm demand before selling
Secure a minimum number of sales before going into production.

and Kiva addresses a similar concept on a global scale:

By choosing a business on our website and then lending money online to that enterprise, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive monthly email updates that let you know about the progress being made by the small business you’ve sponsored. These updates include reports on loan repayment progress, photos of new capital equipment, narratives on business growth and standard of living improvements, and more. As loans are repaid, you will get your original loan money back.

(via Boing Boing)

Bullshit Bingo – “Check off each block when you hear these words during a meeting, seminar, or phone call. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout BULLSHIT!!”

(via Hotlinks)

And Paul Graham’s keynote at the OSCON 2005 What Business Can Learn from Open Source is available at IT Conversations.

If you like Emacs and if you are addicted to tags you will love Conrad Barski’s tagging mode, which turns any text document into a full-fledged tag-aware application.

(via Hot Links)