Birthday Distribution

Are you a Birthday outlier?

http://thedailyviz.com/2012/05/12/how-common-is-your-birthday/
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Valuable Concept of the Day

Tacit Knowledge

Deeply personal experience, aptitudes, perceptions, insights, and know-how that are implied or indicated but not actually expressed - it resides in individuals & teams. http://bit.ly/H0cCOu

Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal or explicit knowledge) is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. http://bit.ly/HgZ2YB

Unwritten, unspoken, and hidden vast storehouse of knowledge held by practically every normal human being, based on his or her emotions, experiences, insights, intuition, observations and internalized information. Tacit knowledge is integral to the entirety of a person's consciousness, is acquired largely through association with other people, and requires joint or shared activities to be imparted from on to another. Like the submerged part of an iceberg it constitutes the bulk of what one knows, and forms the underlying framework that makes explicit knowledge possible. Concept of tacit knowledge was introduced by the Hungarian philosopher-chemist Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) in his 1966 book 'The Tacit Dimension.' Also called informal knowledge. http://bit.ly/GVLyli
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My computer has Spartans...

Customer: “Hi, my son says that I have Spartans on my laptop and I should bring it to you guys.”

Tech Support: “…Ma’am? Spartans?”

Customer: “Yes, I called my son at school and told him that screens keep popping up all the time, and he said that I have Spartans.”

Me: “Oh! You mean Trojans! That’s a possibility; let me run this analyzer on your laptop real quick and we’ll see what’s going on.”

Customer: “Young man, my son is in college and he says it has Spartans. You just stand here in a little uniform and make minimum wage. I think my son knows what he is talking about.”

Tech Support: “You’re right ma’am. I was hoping to run a diagnostic and find out that it wasn’t Spartans, but just by looking at the login screen, I can tell that you probably have about 300 of the little guys running around.”

Customer: “300?! Is that bad?”

Tech Support: “It’s horrible. They cram themselves into a bottleneck and kill wave after wave of data, until there is a wall of dead programs blocking any more traffic through your computer.”

Customer: “Oh, that just figures. I’m going to go buy a new computer.”

Tech Support: “Ok, ma’am, I think that would be best.”

more: Can't Fix Stupid: Ridiculous Tech Support Quotes http://chach.ee/sLy1vc
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Please share and brainstorm.

Save Hawking's Brain!

His ability to communicate is deteriorating faster than tech can keep up. The fear is that Prof Hawking could ultimately lose the ability to communicate by body movement, leaving his brain effectively "locked in" his body.

In a world enthused by the Higgs-Boson, where cutting-edge physics is actually getting wider attention and acclaim, how can we possibly risk losing the ability to communicate with Stephen Hawking?

We need a way to communicate directly with the brain!

More here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18749963

via a post from +Jeremy Dearringer
cc/ +Lyndon NA +Rajini Rao +Brad Acker 
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That about sums it up for me...
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The Engagement Proxy: Who's got it going on?

Quick! How fast can you gauge Engagement on Google+? Bet I can do it more effectively than you via this new page from +CircleCount: http://www.circlecount.com/popularengagement/

This new page of calculated metrics lets you look at pluses and comments and shares in a new way, and lets you slice the results finely into follower strata as well as by country and gender. See who is engaging well in different strata of followers! What topics and tactics are doing well?

This builds off a big discussion from Feb: Does fame really get you engagement? http://bit.ly/IlwBIh

Since then I've been playing with the idea. I'm sure some of you will scoff at the relative crudeness of the metrics, but I'm finding that its both directionally correct and valuable in certain modes, especially discovery and analysis.

Here is a link already setup that slices the data in a way that is enlightening. It shows Google+ Users with Highly engaging content and 10K to 15K followers. http://bit.ly/Hy2HPE

This slice helped me locate several interesting new people, each with their own unique modes of engagement. The variety is interesting and energizing - so many ways to engage, so little time!:

+Liz Krane
Nerdly masterpeices

+Bill Wood
Photog - Landscapes

+David Shellabarger
Android Developer, Entrepreneur

+Glenn Thomas
Creative thinker. Social media and mobile technology.

+John Scalzi
Science Fiction Writer

+Andy Korolis
Photog

+Jason DaCosta
Fitness Training

+Margaret Tompkins
Photog

+Bliss Morgan
Engager

+Elle Gray
Engager

+Mikey Ace
Music producer and animated gif lover

cc/ing some of you from that previous post:
+Max Huijgen +Denis Labelle +Alexander Becker +Rajini Rao +AJ Kohn +Robert Scoble +Gabriel Vasile +Kimberly Hayworth +Lyndon NA +Derya Unutmaz +Jeremy Dearringer +Sasch Mayer +Francine Hardaway +Anne-Marie Clark +Jason Hurtado Daniels +Gideon Rosenblatt +Meg Tufano +Pam Adger +Hermine Ngnomire +Joe Ohio +Brian Deyo +Robert E. del Sol +Ward Plunet +Robert Anderson +Alizée Rait +Jaana Nyström +Esteban Contreras +Eugene O'Donnell +Shaker Cherukuri +Mark Traphagen
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Does fame really get you engagement?

Here are my back of the napkin calculations using +CircleCount data:

+Rajini Rao EngageFactor = 258 (Shares+Comments+Pluses)/posts
each post would engage 1.5% of following if engagement was spread equally [[17,237 followers]]

+Robert Scoble EngageFactor = 99 (Shares+Comments+Pluses)/posts
each post would engage .02% of following if engagement was spread equally [[512,950 followers]]

Not trying to knock Scoble, his engagement is great, but he makes a nice universal rock star comparison marker. :)

But Rajini Rao is doing something amazing. I wish I could do what she is doing. And I hope I can, by studying how she, and amazing people like her, are killing it on Google+.

Well done, +Rajini Rao!

Who else out there is engaging in amazing ways?

cc/ +Max Huijgen +Denis Labelle +Alexander Becker

Added data points:

+Jeri Ryan -- EF = 492 // PEN .05% // Followers = 1,071,551
+William Shatner -- EF = 331 // PEN .04% // Followers = 775,551
+Rajini Rao -- EF = 258 // PEN = 1.5% // Followers = 17,237
+Matt Cutts -- EF = 206 // PEN = .12% // Followers = 166,209
+Robert Scoble -- EF = 99 // PEN = .02% // Followers = 512,950
+Gabriel Vasile -- EF = 91 // PEN = .26% // Followers = 34,714
+Max Huijgen -- EF = 44 // PEN = .37% // Followers = 12,034
+Jeff Jockisch -- EF = 18 // PEN = .22% // Followers = 8,080

EngageFactor EF = (Shares+Comments+Pluses)/Posts
Penetration PEN = EF/Followers
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Mobile version of XKCD!   
http://m.xkcd.com/1174/

Wonder why they don't have an App?  Maybe the comic below :)

via +Ade Oshineye 
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Your perception of reality is limited to a thin slice.

Cool chart from http://abstrusegoose.com/421 who says:

In the grand scheme of things, we are all pretty much deaf and blind.
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Brilliant or stupid? I'm going with brilliant after reading the details.

Ford says just Kick the Bumper to Open the Trunk...

It’s an elegantly simple idea: just kick a spot on the bumper, and the tailgate lifts up. It also works in reverse. Once you’ve loaded the car, kick the bumper again, and the tailgate comes down.

The idea works with two sensors as well as a keyless entry system (after all, you wouldn't want people going around and kicking your car’s bumper to get into it). And it takes a human kick to open the tailgate — running over road kill or backing into the side of the garage won’t set it off.

Ford says it spent six months perfecting the idea in its Human Machine Interface laboratory.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/03/06/hands-full-ford-says-no-problem-kick-the-bumper/
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2012/03/06/027785-ford-unveils-kick-activated-tailgate-for-all-new-kuga-2012.html
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Fun with Data!

The Y'all Boundary  You know when you cross it!

+Doyle Groves created a fun visualization of tweets that contain Y'all (and variations.)  Check out the interactive online version here: goo.gl/AGq4G

Do you love that southern speak?  Or does it grate on you?

+Meg Tufano are you in or out?  :)
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My team at work is giggling about this one in our Yammer stream:
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Well done, Google!
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I'm testing out some product ideas and want your feedback:

As a person with a lot of knowledge and expertise in a certain topical area, who has bested the competition to reach the apex of acclaim, what would you like to referred to as?

A Guru
A Genius
An Expert
An Authority
... or something else?

How do these titles make you feel?  What do you think they convey to the general public?

P.S. I know titles suck and it really might vary by the type of information you have dominion over. ;)
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Identity and Reputation Circle

Klout and Social Scoring is impacting your life
...whether you know it or not. whether you like it or not. whether you think it measures anything of value or not.

And as Google moves to do the same with AuthorRank, which already impacts page rank, the world is about to change.

My advice? Embrace it. Learn to use it. Take the first mover advantage.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/ff_klout/

cc/ +Klout +Mark Traphagen +AJ Kohn
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If you could start over with Circles, what would you do differently?

Lots of talk in the blogosphere about how wack managing friends is on Facebook, and how our own foibles kill us.

Does any of this apply to you and your Circles? What cool Circle techniques might you recommend for someone starting out or starting over?

Sorry Mike, Facebook could reboot and we'd mess it up again :: http://bit.ly/zVoGn9

This amazing image by Belgian multidisciplinary visual artist Ben Heine:
http://www.benheine.com/projects.php?dossier=72157623553428960
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U no linky to Olympics

Olympic organisers attempt to change the way the internet works. :) 

According to TOS, you are only allowed link to the official site of the Olympics if you’re going to say nice things about the Olympics.

http://blog.indexoncensorship.org/2012/07/13/london-2012-olympics-fails-internet/
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Are you scared or excited about where all of this is going?

Author Rank: Google gets smarter - by letting you claim your identity and content.

Author Rank is Invisible Klout

For the first time, Google has the capacity to value content you create on other platforms. Google can even begin to value your contributions based on its assessment of your actual identity.  from Jay Bear's Convince and Convert: http://goo.gl/fL1qf

I love it, but those of you that hate +Klout  should realize that this is not so different, albeit done with a lot more depth and finesse.
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I'm not in the least bit anti-Google, and I wont be deleting my web history before March 1. But if you have more concerns than I, here are instructions...

How to Hide your Web History before the Big Merge

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted instructions for deleting your web history and stopping it from being collected in the future, which is the only way (short of cancelling your Google account) to keep that data from being merged with everything Google knows about you from Google+, YouTube and its other sites.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/how-remove-your-google-search-history-googles-new-privacy-policy-takes-effect

hat tip to http://geeks.thedailywh.at/2012/02/22/google-privacy-precaution-of-the-day/
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The Hiring Algorithms are coming

On call center workers:
The software said that what does matter in a good call-center worker—one who won't quit before the company recoups its $5,000 investment in training—is personality. Data show that creative types tend to stick around for the necessary six months. Inquisitive people often don't.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578006252019616768.html

I wrote on a LinkedIn post about this yesterday in response toa post by +Jeremy Haskell :

But while the final decision likely must come from an informed human brain, I expect that the potential pool of possibles to be curated by algorithms and based in many cases on new measures of skill, reputation, and influence.

I expect an economy that will run more and more on reputation metrics and skill matching algorithms.
http://www.ere.net/2012/10/11/computers-arent-ready-to-take-over-hiring/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=linkedin
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