What’s Next, Scooby Doo Reads the News?

It's with a mixture of pride and confusement that I post this article on the recent use of graphic facilitation on a prime time news broadcast.

At least it was bubbly Katie Couric, who giggled, and not, shouty Bill O'Reilly. I do think that the Daily Show should incorporate the methodology for full effect.

clipped from tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com Monday’s New York Times noted that CBS News recently introduced the “Fast Draw,” an animated series using dry-erase markers that tries to shed light on news developments. The feature, created by two new CBS employees, debuted on “CBS News Sunday Morning” last month and appeared on the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” on Feb. 8: But “Fast Draw” is not the only instance of animation on television news, as several readers noted. Three days before the CBS segment, the ABC correspondent Robert Krulwich used cartoon drawings to explain the delegate rules for each party. Andrew Tyndall, a television news analyst, said he preferred the illustrations used by ABC to the metaphors used by CBS. The Fox Business Network has also dabbled with animation. Each Friday on the new business network’s “Happy Hour” show, a pair of computer-generated characters named Hoofy and Boo present a short cartoon newscast. The segments are created by a financial entertainment Web site called Minyanville.

Thanks to Jarrell McAlister.

Gene studies confirm "out of Africa" theories

clipped from www.reuters.com Two big genetic studies confirm theories that modern humans evolved in Africa and then migrated through Europe and Asia to reach the Pacific and Americas. The two studies also show that Africans have the most diverse DNA, and the fewest potentially harmful genetic mutations. One of the studies shows European-Americans have more small mutations, while the others show Native Americans, Polynesians and others who populated Australia and Oceania have more big genetic changes. The studies, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, paint a picture of a population of humans migrating off the African continent, and then shrinking at some point because of unknown adversity. Later populations grew and spread from this smaller genetic pool of founder ancestors -- a phenomenon known as a bottleneck. Populations that remained in Africa kept their genetic diversity -- something seen in many other studies.

Tech Solutions on a Shoestring

Want to get up and running on very little capital? OpenSource and web apps are the way to go. This is advice to social entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurs in general) from Jeff Skoll's foundation. Open Source solutions like Ubuntu for free and OpenOffice give an instant operating system and Office suite of productivity tools. Online solutions for websites, shared documents, collaboration and customer relationship management include: PBwiki, WetPaint, Google, Zoho, 37Signals

clipped from www.socialedge.org Almost all start-ups run into limitations in two critical areas - time & money. You can never have enough of either. Technology is supposed to help you save a bit of both, but it always seems to end up taking more time and more money than it ever saves you. Even when you find a solution that saves you money, it almost always takes more time than you have to give, and vice versa. What choices are available to help swing things back in the intended direction? Open source tools are free, but expensive in terms of time lost to implement. There are free web services available that allow you to utilize their capabilities - sans your own branding. Gmail is great, but how long can you get away without having your own domain associated with your email? Same goes for free wikis and other collaboration tools.

Just When I Thought Pro-Wrestling was Awesome

This just in...

"Teens who watch wrestling take more health risks"

clipped from www.reuters.com Teenage fans of TV wrestling are more likely than their peers to be aggressive or take chances with their health, a study suggests. Researchers found that among 2,300 16- to 20-year-old Americans, those who watched professional wrestling were more likely to be violent, smoke or have unprotected sex -- and the more they watched TV wrestling, the greater their odds of taking such risks. The findings, reported in the Southern Medical Journal, do not prove that watching wrestling alters young people's behavior. "It may be the case that kids who have a personality that leads them to be aggressive also gravitate to watching wrestling on TV," noted Dr. Mark Wolfson, one of the researchers on the study and an associate professor at Wake-Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Of the teenagers in their survey, just over 22 percent of males said they had watched pro wrestling in the past two weeks, as did 14 percent of females.

Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic

In many daily tasks, of course, a lost second is unimportant. But one implication of the Vanderbilt research mentioned below is that talking on a cellphone while driving a car is dangerous. A one-second delay in response time at 60 miles an hour could be fatal.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The human brain, with its hundred billion neurons and hundreds of trillions of synaptic connections, is a cognitive powerhouse in many ways. “But a core limitation is an inability to concentrate on two things at once,” said René Marois, a neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University. Mr. Marois and three other Vanderbilt researchers reported in an article last December in the journal Neuron that they used magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint the bottleneck in the brain and to measure how much efficiency is lost when trying to handle two tasks at once. Study participants were given two tasks and were asked to respond to sounds and images. The first was to press the correct key on a computer keyboard after hearing one of eight sounds. The other task was to speak the correct vowel after seeing one of eight images.

For Any Teacher Out There... Watch This

What is the learning environment like today?

What is happening as the 19th century model (teacher + chalkboard) collides with the new media tools (iPod + laptop + Wifi)?

How many hours do they spend in class? On the phone? On Facebook? How do the current educational methods even begin to prepare them for jobs that don't even exist yet?

This short video summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today - how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime. Created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.

iHaveNoTribe.com - I Am Kenyan

Via Ethan Zuckerman:

A new project by David Kobia and crew, encouraging Kenyans around the world to transcend their tribal identity and affirm their identity as Kenyans. An interesting response to the difficulties of keeping message boards sane during the crisis.

Kobia also coordinated Ushahidi.com, a site that integrates GoogleMaps and SMS for citizens to report incidences of Riots, Deaths, Property Damage, Government Forces, Civilians, Looting, Rape, Peace.

It also has a running timeline of events, making it a powerful tool to trace the violence. Unfortunately, with some much violence involving so many impoverished people, this can't begin to give transparency to the chaos.

Although I am a Southern, American, white, suburban kid, I was born in Kenya and have carried hope and romance for this beautiful, passionate piece of the earth in my heart.

Monkey Management for Project Teams

Goal of Time Management:
Get control over the timing and content of what you do.

clipped from www.thepmpodcast.com Wait... what's that on your back? Could that be a Monkey? In the course of our working days all of us acquire duties, chores and tasks. Some of them are important and they need to be addressed so that we can finish our deliverables. Others must be considered as "Monkeys" - tasks that we got stuck with and now don't seem to be able to get rid of even though we might not be the right person to take care of them. And we all wonder - how did I get stuck with this? Mike Graupner, PMP (http://www.pm-mind.com) describes to us today the techniques he uses to address the Monkeys in his life. We talk about Monkey Management in general and we also look at how this translates into managing the Monkeys on your projects.

In addition to the law of monkey management, the authors list six rules of managing monkeys that are instructive to managers. These include:

1. Monkeys should be fed or shot. No one likes the consequences of a starving monkey. They tend to be very disagreeable and squeal and raise a ruckus. Monkeys must be fed periodically; in this analogy, the problem must be dealt with between the manager and the employee with the problem on a regular basis. If the monkey can be shot (the problem solved quickly), then feeding times are not necessary.

2. Every monkey should have an assigned next feeding time and a degree of initiative. After a feeding session, the manager should select an appropriate time for the next feeding and should have a number of action steps for the employee to take. "Can we meet next Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. to see how things are going and what we should do next?"

3. The monkey population should be kept below the maximum number that the manager has time to feed. The authors suggest that it should take 15 minutes to feed a monkey, and that managers should keep the list of problems that are in various stages of solution at a manageable number.

4. Monkeys should fed by appointment only. Allowing employees to bring problems to you on their timetable increases the chances that the monkey will move from the employee to the manager. By setting specific times for addressing the problem, managers empower employees to make interim decisions about the problem, and still report back.

5. Monkey feeding appointments may be rescheduled but never indefinitely postponed. Either party, the manager or the subordinate, may reschedule a feeding appointment for any reason, but it must be scheduled to a specific time to avoid losing track of the monkey.

6. Monkeys shall be fed face to face or by telephone, but not in writing. Holding feeding sessions via e-mail or memo transfers the monkey to the manager. An employee can pass the monkey to the manager by simply requesting a response. Feedings that take place in person or on the phone require the monkey to remain with the employee unless the supervisor takes an affirmative step to take it.

Proper delegation skills, properly applied as suggested in this creative approach, can help managers better solve problems and develop their employees' problem solving skills. Visualizing each problem as a monkey that is impatient and noisy can help managers see problems as they really are and address them in the best possible way. Beware of the monkeys that may come into your life today!

Ready to Ware

Clothes That Look Hip and Track Your Vital Signs, Too

clipped from www.wired.com De Rossi, who has worked on robotic skin and motion-capture tech for Darpa and the US National Institutes of Health, began exploring the idea of fabric as a data-collection medium 12 years ago. Most of his designs employ thin, pliable strands of conductive steel spun with cotton or polyester fibers into yarn. The Wealthy suit has nine electrodes and conductive leads woven in, yet the fabric looks and feels completely normal. The challenge in incorporating sensors into clothing — even skin-tight unitards — is that the fabric shifts when the body moves, resulting in sloppy, irregular signals. To deal with this, De Rossi's team developed software algorithms to clean up the data, along with code to reconstruct the wearer's movements. These programs are the real genius behind the company's work. "Even when you are sick, if you have something that doesn't look nice, you don't want to put it on."