So what’s stupid about this ad? By my count, the phone is on the screen for a total of 6 seconds out of 60. Verizon, please stop making it seem like I’m in The Italian Job  - it isn’t going to work.  Compare this to some of the latest iPhone ads…

The iPhone is shown for a total of 25 seconds out of 30, demonstrating functionality.  Is Siri kind of gimmicky?  Yes, but that’s not the point.  The point is if you want to sell me on a phone, maybe you should show me the phone.

Source: NYT

Engineers constantly look to nature for inspiration.  Birds give us more efficient planes, trees give us stronger buildings, hell even velcro was inspired by a plant.  This is actually an entire field of expertise called biomimicry.  What’s interesting though is that many other aspects of human civilization exhibit unintentional biological comparisons.  To start, watch this incredible TED Talk:

The surprising math of cities and corporations

Some amazing takeaways:

• City infrastructure scales like animals. 
• Metrics with no biological equivalent scale unnaturally (crime, wages, and more).
• Companies both scale and grow like animals.

Primer: The Buffett Rule

In case you don’t know, the “Buffett Rule” is named after Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor.  He has made many pleas to congress to increase the tax rates on the wealthiest Americans to at least be as high as the rates on middle Americans.  Mr. Buffett, at an effective tax rate of 17%, argues that he pays less in taxes (as a percentage of his income) than his secretary who pays roughly 30%.  This is because many wealthy individuals like Mr. Buffett derive most of their income from investments which are taxed at a lower rate than regular payroll. The president’s proposal, named after Mr. Buffett, says the wealthiest Americans’s effective rate must be at least as high as the middle class.

Public Sentiment

Polls show new proposals like the “Buffett Rule” are supported by the majority of Americans.  In a CNN poll from August, 63% of those surveyed “say the super committee should call for increased taxes on higher-income Americans and businesses”. In fact, the poll goes even further: “only a third say that taxes on wealthy people should be kept low because higher-income Americans help create jobs, with 62 percent saying that taxes on the wealthy should be high so the government can use the money for programs to help lower-income Americans.”

Wealth Distribution: Facing Reality

Getting beyond policies and polls, let’s look at some harder science around the core issue: wealth distribution.  Dan Ariely is a renowned professor of behavioral economics and physchology.  He has written written some fantastic books: Predictably Irrational, and The Upside to Irrationality (I highly recommend both).  Ariely conducted a fascinating study in 2010 on wealth income equality in America.  Interviewing thousands of Americans, he asked them to estimate how wealth was distributed in America and also to give their ideal distribution.  The chart below shows the results.

Source: Dan Ariely

To summarize some of the findings: While most respondents idealized the top quintile to own ~32% of the wealth, they estimated they actually own ~58% today.  In reality, the wealthiest 20% own over 80 percent of the wealth in the US. (Bonus: the top 1% owns nearly 50 percent of all wealth).  On the other end of the spectrum, the poorest 40% of Americans own just 0.3 percent of the wealth; compare that to respondents’ estimated 10 percent and idealized 25 percent.

Things get even more interesting where Ariely breaks down the respondents by income, political affiliation, and gender.  The battles of Democrats vs Republicans, and poorer vs richer  are much smaller than you’d expect!  (For all intents and purposes we shall consider Kerry voters Democrat and Bush voters Republican.)

Source: Dan Ariely

Looking at the estimated distribution first, the variation between all of the groups is less than 5%.  Give or take, we all have the same rough idea of how wealth is distributed in the US right now (never mind that we underestimate the wealthiest quintile by more than 20 percent).  Within this slight variation, men estimate less equal vs women and Republicans estimate more equal distribution by a few percentage points.

But the “ideal” results is where we get a glimpse at how we think it should be.  Lower income respondents (<$50k) believed the top quintile should have less of the total wealth compared to higher income respondents (>$100k).  This comes as no surprise.  But what is surprising is that the difference is only 10 percent.  That, and even the wealthier respondents’ ideal for the top quintile is off by nearly 50 percent of the actual total wealth!

Some additional figures were recently released highlighting the vast wealth inequality especially at the short end.  One in every six Americans lives below the poverty line now.  This trend has been going up for the past 4 years in a row.  Additionally, one of every 5 children (under 18) lives in poverty.  A BBC Article outlines further statistics.

Political Inaction

Policy is certainly not the only way to affect wealth distribution, but it seems unreasonable for politicians to be fighting vehemently against tax increases on the wealthiest Americans when we aren’t even close to how Americans (both red and blue) would prefer to see wealth distributed. This bickering and inaction is particularly disheartening given the latest statistics of poverty in the US.  So how is so little getting accomplished on both sides of the aisle?

In the scientific community, conflicts of interest are taken very seriously.  Anyone looking to publish must give full details into any (even remotely possible) conflicts of interest to preserve the integrity of the paper and research.  Generally this would be a list of sponsors, sometimes corporate, financing the study or research.  This helps foster a transparent and open community among scientists in pursuit of the truth.

This ethic has not been imbued in politics.  I’ve never heard a politician listing off their largest donors at a rally, or displaying them anywhere but required by law.  Since money is presumed a politician’s largest possible conflict of interest, it is worth investigating further.  For the 2010 elections (off-cycle), $3.6 billion was given to politicians, PACs, etc.  Out of the $3.6 billion spent, 64.8% came from just 0.04% of Americans. With about 90 million citizens voting in last year’s election, that 0.04% is just 36,000 people.  These statistics are form the CNN Money Article: Starbucks CEO to DC: You’ve Been Cut Off.

In Closing

So are Obama’s new proposals “class warfare”?  No.  This kind of bombastic language does little but stir up the base and make the road to compromise harder.  If only our politicians just looked at the data…  I hope this post allows you to step out the fray for a moment and reflect on the facts I’ve presented.  If you found any of these data compelling, I encourage you to share it with your friends.

Thanks,
Riley

In The Beginning

On the positive side, people with severe disabilities find a new degree of freedom through their thoughts.  While still in its infancy, software coupled with an EEG (see image) allows completely paralyzed victims to communicate at 10 characters per minute with thought alone.  A Star Wars toy lets kids become Jedi and float a ball using nothing but focus.  Another helps athletes by measuring their concentration while in the middle of critical moments, such as a golf swing.

Pandora’s Box

The use that has really opened up Pandora’s Box is used with prison inmates:

On a more serious note, earlier this year Myndplay games and interactive films were used as part of a scheme to reduce reoffending rates and anti-social behaviour among prison inmates aged 18 to 25. “We found it to be an excellent tool to show them how they can develop greater control over their thought processes,” says David Apparicio…

I agree that this is an excellent use for the technology.  Helping young inmates control negative emotions through realtime feedback sounds incredibly positive.  Now, don’t take this as a “slippery slope” argument (I hate those),but I find it interesting to imagine how such technology could find its way into other parts of the justice system especially in 10-20 years when images or memories could be interpreted…

Pleading the 5th

As a defendant in the US, you have the right to refuse to answer any question if you believe the answer may be incriminating.   A concept that dates back to the Magna Carta, this legal protection helps prevent abuse of power and ensure due process.  However, the amendment is facing some fresh challenges in a digital age already.  Many defendants are pleading the 5th when ordered by courts to disclose their passwords to decrypt files.  This NPR story highlights one recent case.  Prosecutors say it is the same as a physical key that defendants would be obligated to turn over today while defendants claim protection from self incrimination.

So how could more advanced mind reading technology play into this?  Consider a similar analogy: if you took a picture with your camera of the crime scene, that picture could most certainly be used as evidence.  What if that picture instead is extracted using software and an EEG from your brain?  Would this count as self-incrimination?  What if you refused to allow the brain scan or it was taken while you slept, almost like a wire tap?

Brain Search Warrants

With probable cause, the police may use search warrants and take evidence such as drugs, computers, or files to court.  They can tap your phones or read their email given proper authorization and cause. But what about the information in your head?  Your knowledge of a crime sits right there in the gray matter.  Could law enforcement be one day allowed to execute a search warrant on your brain?  Of course this sounds far-fetched, but so did enabling a paralyzed woman to communicate using nothing but thoughts 10 years ago.

Exonerated

DNA evidence has been instrumental in freeing hundreds of falsely imprisoned citizens.  Could brain scans do the same thing?  Something as emotional as murder will surely leave a big scar in your psyche.  So if that scar were missing, could you be set free?  While not likely to be an easy path to freedom, brain scans could help separate the innocents from the liars.

Your Ideas!

There are many untold uses for brainwave readers in the next 10 or 20 years — these are just a few!  What ideas do you have?  I promise I won’t steal them

Note: some of these musings may also have been marinating in my brain with this Wall Street article: Why Software is Eating the World.

1. DIY Attitude

Geeks love to do things on themselves.  We are a stubborn hobbyist people with a Do-It-Yourself attitude.   Whether it’s replacing the dishwasher, installing our own OS, or brewing beer.  Yes for just a few hundred dollars you can setup your own microbrewery in your garage!  The massive explosion of homebrewing and geekery perhaps go hand-in-hand…

2. Trivial Knowledge

Every geek has a vast repository of trivial knowledge in their brain.  What instrument does Max Rebo play?  What is the max airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?  What the hell is a flux capacitor?  Beer is a surprisingly complex and diverse field, sporting many types and hundreds of sub-types.  This kind of trivial knowledge is just up our alley!

3. Social Lubricant

While we geeks can fix your computer or spout useless knowledge, we sometimes have trouble holding regular conversations with real people.  Thankfully, beer comes to the rescue!  It contains just enough alcohol to make geeks stop feeling awkward, but not enough to trigger their IBS or make a fool of themselves.

4. Taste

Let’s face it.  Beer tastes good!  IPAs, Irish Stouts, ESBs, Hefeweizens — it doesn’t matter.  They’re all delicious!  So grab a pint and a few pals and give a toast to beer (responsibly of course).

p.s. Apologies on months of the radio silence.  Finishing school while moving & starting my full-time job has kept me away from the blog for too long.

150.  That’s Dunbar’s Number.  It is the theoretical maximum number of stable relationships a person can have at once (on average).  This includes your significant other, all your family, friends, and close coworkers.  Then why do we see people on Facebook with other 1,000 friends these days?  Because when Facebook originated, they truly were all friends.  They were your classmates, your hall-mates, and others at your university.  But now, with anyone able to create an account, I’m friends with my Grandma, elementary school acquaintances I haven’t seen in years, and even a teacher or two.

Redefine

Most of these people aren’t truly friends.  Merely people you knew once, met a couple times, or see every once in a while.  The remedy?  Redefine Facebook’s definition of “friend” by using lists.  Whenever someone friend-requests me or I add someone, I put them into one of three buckets: close friend, acquaintance , or limited.  Then, using Facebook’s custom privacy settings, I set what each bucket has access to:

• Close Friend: these are the people I am actually close with.  Only 144 people are on this list, fitting just under Dunbar’s number.  They have access to all my photos, posts, and info.
• Acquaintance: I occasionally see them, but definitely not regularly.  They have access to most things except photos.
• Limited: either I haven’t spoken to them in a long time or would prefer they don’t see the ridiculous things my friends and I say/do.  Parents, bosses, etc land here.  Can’t see the wall, photos, or much info.  Sorry.

Why?

Because this isn’t MySpace.  I want to be able to share stuff with my friends without having to always censor myself.  Let’s try to get back to the original definition of “friend.”

Too Much Junk in the Trunk

As a responsible driver, you should have certain things in your car, no matter who you are.  These are things that will keep you safe and moving.  Additionally, you shouldn’t have much else in your car.  By taking out that set of golf clubs and all the other junk, you can increase your fuel economy and make your car safer.

1. Tire Pressure Gauge & Pump

Tires deflate naturally.  A good tire will lose about 1 psi per month, but as the seasons change from warm to cold, it could be as high as 3 psi per month.  That’s why it’s important to check the pressure in your tires about once a month with a pressure gauge in your car.  But just checking them by itself doesn’t do any good.  You should also have a tire pump in your car that can plug into the 12-volt socket so you can actually inflate them back to the safe pressure, even if you’re not at home.

2. Spare Tire & Kit

Having a spare tire means you can keep a bad day from being a terrible one.  You never know when a tire will go flat or some idiot will let a bucket of nails fall off the back of his truck.  Yes, it adds weight and lowers your car’s fuel economy, but when you break down on the side of the road, it will all be worth it.  Be sure you have not just the spare tire itself, but the tire change kit too.

3. Flashlight

Unfortunately, our cars aren’t polite enough to only break down during the day.  If you find yourself on the side of the road at night, you’re going to need to be able to see somewhere your headlights don’t shine.  They’re cheap and will save you an enormous amount of frustration if your car ever decides to stop working at night.

4. Sunglasses

Driving at night isn’t the safest, but around sunrise or sunset can be the most dangerous.  If the sun is shining directly into your eyes, you’re not going to be able to see the car in front of you slam on its breaks.  Keep a pair of sunglasses in the car that you only use for driving.  That way, they’re always there for those twilight hours when you need them.

5. Hands-Free Device

It’s illegal in many states to talk on the phone in the car without using a hands-free device today.  Even if it’s not illegal in your state, you should have one.  It allows you to keep two hands on the wheel, something that is critical if you get into an emergency situation.  As someone who driving manual, it’s impossible to talk on the phone, hold the steering wheel, and shift gears at the same time, so I never drive without one.

Bonus: iPod Plugin

Perhaps not a necessity, but I can’t drive in silence, and I can’t stand radio or the commercials.  And I’m far too lazy to burn a CD every time I download new music or make a good playlist.  Having someway to plugin an mp3 player enables not just you to easily play through all of your music, but allows your friends to plug in & play the latest hit they’ve heard.

Anything Else?

Did I miss anything that you think every driver should have?  Do you disagree with any of the items I’ve listed?  Comment below & share your thoughts!

Search Vandyland at the Speed of Thought

Unless you’ve been living under a rock this month or dislike Google, you’ve probably noticed your web search page has changed.  It’s called “Google Instant” and displays search results as you type.  This remarkable feature makes searching much much faster by harnessing the power of suggested searches and web 2.0 technologies.

Most Sincere Form of Flattery

Since its release, Google Instant has been replicated by many programmers.  A couple of the exemplary examples include Youtube Intant and iTunes Instant.  Seeing these awesome examples, and noticing Vanderbilt’s slow search page, I went to work on my imitation.

Introducing Instant Vu

Spending only a few hours in Dreamweaver, I was able to produce the beta that is Instant-Vu.com.  It doesn’t work perfectly, but it is able to perform queries as you type, all within the realm of Vandyland.  As I continue to work on it, I hope to incorporate news searches, campus maps, and image search.  Hope you like it and check back for new features over the next few weeks.  Go Commodores.

So what do you think?  Is this something that could be useful or are going to stick with the standard Vanderbilt.edu search?  Are there features you’d like to see?  Comment below!

As a student, I know that taking good notes in class is a surefire way to perform better on exams, quizzes, and homework assignments.  But I’ve always struggled to find an effective balance between jotting down too much detail while making the notes easy to follow later for studying.  The problem lies in  finding where, in all the pages of notes I have taken, the one tiny reminder or equation is scribbled. I initially considered taking notes on my laptop for its ability to index text, making it searchable, but quickly ruled it out.  As an engineer, I am constantly writing equations, solving problems, and making diagrams.  Limited to the ability of typing or primitive shape-making, I knew a laptop was insufficient.

Enter iPad.  I can take indexible text notes, while taking advantage of the touch-screen to draw diagrams and handwrite equations.  I even bought a stylus to make it more like handwriting.  With the hardware issue solved, it was just a matter of finding the right software (app) that would allow for both keyboard and drawings.

SoundNote: Flawed

The first app I tried is called SoundNote.  From the description and screenshots, it seemed to have everything I needed: indexible text input combined with freehand drawing, all exportable to PDF and my computer.  But after purchasing the app and using it in class, I quickly became aware of its shortcomings.  Instead of treating drawn lines as blots of ink, SoundNote treats all contiguous sections as objects.  This object metaphor is the app’s downfall.

First, the touchable area around a drawn object is too large.  This makes it impossible to draw new lines near old ones because the program thinks I am trying to select the old object.  In the screenshot, the dot toward the upper right is the closest to the highlighted object I could draw.  When taking notes, I was unable to make a reasonable “=” sign or add subscripts to variables.

The second problem stems from the application’s interpretation of a touch, thinking of it as either a “select” or a “draw” command.  A single, unmoving tap on the screen will act as a “select” action, and the program will attempt to highlight any drawn object near it.  Drawing the dot of an i or simple points becomes impossible.

After just one day of taking notes, I was back in the app store hunting for alternatives.

Mental Note: Great

The second app I tried, and still use today, is called Mental Note.  When in drawing mode, the app doesn’t use an object metaphor, but replicates how handwriting works in the physical world: no matter how small or close to other drawings you touch, it will still recognize the touch as a “draw” action, and place ink.  Instead of selecting objects, then touching delete, Mental Note has an eraser in addition to undo/redo buttons.  This much more refined app performs with ease the two basic functions necessary for handwriting digitally: drawing and erasing.

Prioritizing Requirements

The developers of SoundNote should have realized that the primary requirements of the drawing feature: writing and erasing, take precedent over all others and should not be compromised.  Contrarily, the developers of Mental Note have a much better understanding of their stakeholders and the requirements about which they care the most.  The basic drawing operation is simple and robust.  The eraser operation acts just like the physical equivalent, erasing everything you touch.  However, the developers realized a more effective operation to perform the erase function: undo.  The undo operation acts like a fast eraser on your most relevant drawing: your most recent one.

Final Verdict: Mental Note

I continue to use Mental Note everyday, and am much more pleased with it as a result of the good systems engineering the developers used, primarily their stakeholder analysis and prioritizing of requirements.  SoundNote on the other hand failed to realize their stakeholders’ most important requirements and have created an inferior product.

Technology is supposed to make our lives easier.  Whether it’s something as complex as a cell phone or as simple as a toothbrush, we expect new technology to enrich our lives while being easy to use.  My printer has yet to be either of those things.

For this semester, I decided to get a new printer that could not only scan, but could wirelessly print.  I thought it would be great to be able to throw my printer in the closet to save desk space without losing any convenience or functionality.  While at Target, I chose the Lexmark X4650 because it touted its easy-to-use wifi printing, had a good exterior design, and was cheaper than other wifi printers.  Boy was I in for a world of hurt when I got that printer back to my room.

Technical Tirade

Before I could enable the wireless features, I had to install a bunch of bloatware.  Fine.  That wasn’t entirely unexpected but doesn’t exactly fit my definition of “easy to use.”  With the printer connected to my computer for configuration, I went through 2 different wizards to get the wifi feature working.  I added it to the Vanderbilt wireless network, and was told my printer was all ready to go! Even the little wifi light on the front was green.  Splendid!  Except the printer was nowhere to be seen when I went to print something.  The setup wizards couldn’t find it, and despite knowing the precise IP address of the printer, couldn’t get it to connect.

I tried a few more times connecting to the Vanderbilt network before attempting a new strategy: creating my own wireless network.  My computer would get internet from the ethernet while pushing out my own personal wifi network to which the printer could connect.  No dice.  The light turned green, but the printer was conspicuously missing from the list.  My patience was running out.

Using a few more geeky tricks, I tried valiantly to enable wireless printing, but was thwarted at every turn.  Two hours later and my printer was still not setup.

Wired Defeat

Having lost the battle to set up wireless printing, I conceded to having to unplug all the connections to my laptop and plug in to the printer over by the closet.  But even to enable wired printing, I was again stopped by the merciless setup wizards!  Apparently having the proper driver installed and adding the printer via my mac’s settings wasn’t going to fly with Lexmark.  I had to go through the arduous setup wizards AGAIN.

My printer remains in my closet, a constant reminder of how the subpar engineering and designers at Lexmark prevented me from doing what their marketers so grandly touted as a main feature.  I don’t mean to be rude, Lexmark, but with all due respect, perhaps you should test your products a little more before shipping them.

Consumer Advice in Summary

Learn from my mistake: Do not buy the Lexmark X4650 if you want a printer that does wireless printing, is easy to setup, and has cheap ink.

Your Turn

Do you have a printer or other piece of technology that failed to live up to its marketing? Vent below and let the world know why they shouldn’t buy it!