Wiki-power

A week or two ago, I had a conversation with a couple of coworkers about the use of blogs/social media to gather information about subjects (and hence justify why I spend so many hours on Google Reader). They were fairly skeptical of the ability of blogs to do the same job that the New York Times or the Economist did.

Although we didn’t settle the debate (it takes time to convince the uninitiated), I had three basic responses:

1. Speed – Services like Twitter are now so fast that there is even some talk about leveraging Twitter as an early warning system/communication system for disasters. And, Wikipedia is now so ubiquitous that one can find informative updates within hours of major events.
2. Insight – As I’ve alluded to before, news agencies don’t provide insight or analysis. They relay talking points and soundbytes. They wrap it up with fancy marketing “wrapping paper.” But they don’t provide useful insight. Blogs provide insightful commentary and background — things that are out of scope or out of the reach for many traditional news sources.
3. Reputation – One issue my coworkers had was that nobody was regulating what bloggers said. “Why should you trust what a blogger has to say?” I replied, “Why should you trust what the New York Times is saying?” The answer, of course, is to only read blogs which you trust. “But how do you know who to trust?” You don’t. But, while you might not know if you can trust a single random journalist from a single newspaper, thanks to the power of blogging, I can quickly read blog entries by Ezra Klein, Greg Mankiw, Megan McArdle, and Tyler Cowen and not only get four insightful accounts (often with sources for me to get more information) from people I trust more than a random economics reporter for a newspaper, but compare their accounts and perspectives to formulate my own informed opinion. Not so easy to do with even a newspaper editorial section. (Disclaimer: I actually do read a fair amount of the Financial Times, Bloomberg, New York Times, and the Economist – because those four publications have achieved the reputation hurdle for me)

Oh, did I say three? I forgot the fourth and most important: its not like the traditional media aren’t using Twitter/Wikipedia/blogs to do their own research: (HT: PhysOrg)

An Irish student’s fake quote on the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia has been used in newspaper obituaries around the world, the Irish Times reported.

Shane Fitzgerald, 22, a final-year student studying sociology and economics at University College Dublin, told the newspaper he placed the quote on the website as an experiment when doing research on globalisation.

Fitzgerald told the newspaper he picked Wikipedia because it was something a lot of journalists look at and it can be edited by anyone.

"I didn’t expect it to go that far. I expected it to be in blogs and sites, but on mainstream quality papers? I was very surprised about," he said.

(Image Credit)

Upgrade

I had the pleasure of upgrading my Blackberry to use the latest version of RIM’s operating system (version 4.5) last Friday. I had intended to do it myself, but I discovered that if your Blackberry is connected to a Blackberry Enterprise Server (i.e. can you check your corporate calendar/email on your Blackberry? If so, then you are) then your IT guy has to do the upgrade for you. At the time, I was annoyed, but in retrospect it’s not that surprising considering how RIM promises enterprise IT guys great control over each device.

And, I have to say, it looks good.

• Revamped email system – No more ugly text-only emails, Blackberry OS 4.5 supports rich text emails and formatting so that the email on your handset looks like what you would see on your desktop/laptop screen; RIM claims that this new system also lets you open/edit Word/PowerPoint files, but I have yet to test that feature so I can neither confirm nor deny it
• Enhanced browser – I haven’t gotten rid of my Opera Mini, but the new Blackberry browser looks infinitely better than the old one – now that, by default, it packs a cursor (I know, revolutionary), what looks to me like better stylesheet support, and its main screen even has an address bar and a search bar built in
• Video record – I always wondered why it was missing in the old Blackberry OS!
• Voice notes – You can now record voice notes and save them for later use!
• Improved font handling – I’ll admit that I’m not a font expert, but the new Blackberry OS fonts just look nicer (have they enabled better anti-aliasing?)

I’ve also revised the list of applications that I’ve currently installed on my Blackberry to my current must-have’s:

• Google Mobile App – This lovely upgrade to the original Google application suite manager now provides a central interface to do Google searches, now with new location-specific searches and voice-searching features, and manage my Gmail and Google Maps applications
• Gmail – Provides you with almost the entire Gmail interface in the form of a rich application – access your Google contacts, star conversations, and access your messages in the threads you are used to
• Google Maps – Full access to Google Maps – including search, Google Latitude, public transit data, traffic, and even street view. It also has the location-sensing which enables you to pinpoint your location, even without GPS, by tracking the nearest cell phone tower
• Opera Mini – Still, probably the best Blackberry browser out there
• Google Talk – Access to your Google Chat via your Blackberry
• Vlingo – A creative application which allows you to voice control multiple features on your Blackberry – including voice dialing, voice-enabled search, voice commands to open up applications, update your Facebook/Twitter status, and (if you pay for the premium version) the ability to compose emails via voice
• WeatherEye – an application which brings weather for a particular region right to your Blackberry; the icon of the application changes based on what the weather is like (for example, when its night time, a moon will show up, when its day time, a sun will show up, if its cloudy, you will see clouds, etc), and gives you ready access to long-term and short-term forecasts
• Ubertwitter – Although still in beta, it’s a very solid Twitter app that I would recommend to anyone who Tweets and is a Blackberry user

And, now, with the new Blackberry App World application (and now that my Blackberry is actually compatible with the newest applications), I aim to test a lot more new applications.

de Young

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, so I decided to extend my Memorial Day weekend by taking this past Friday off. First on my list of things to do: go with my girlfriend to the de Young museum in San Francisco’s lovely Golden Gate Park. And, as this is my blog, I decided to share…

Here’s a shot of the courtyard and the new California Academy of Sciences facility that Sophia took from the observation tower which presents an amazing panoramic view of San Francisco (from 144 feet up):

Here is what the interior of the observation tower looks like:

Here are a couple of shots of us goofing off in James Turrell’s Three Gems, something which I can only describe as a hidden dome within a dome allowing visitors to sit in a very serene spherical confine and just look at the sky.

Here are shots of Sophia lying amongst the giant apple statues that are in the de Young’s courtyard:

And here is me trying to figure out what some of the locals are staring at:

Unable to understand just what it was they were looking at, I tried to converse with one of them:

But to no avail. And last, there’s me, leaning against the giant statue of a safety pin which says “do not touch” (yes, I wasn’t actually touching it, I was actually standing several feet in front of it to give you a sense of just how massive that safety pin was)

This day also marked a personal first — the de Young is the first museum I’ve become a member of, in no small part because of the fact the “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs” exhibit is coming to the de Young and I want priority tickets!

Everything You Want to Know About Antigen Processing

It’s been a while since I’ve worked in a lab, but I remembered always being fascinated by the “tell all” posters which were on the lab walls which laid out everything in a cell/system pertaining to a specific concept in biology. What appealed to me about them is that they conveyed a the complex and interconnected pieces which only together made life work. It was very awe-inspiring (as well as a quick cheat sheet when I had to pretend like I knew what I was researching).

It’s been a while since I’d seen one, but thankfully, Ian York of Michigan State University and blogger at Immunology blog Mystery Rays from Outer Space linked to a new poster from Nature which reviews what is currently know about antigen processing/presentation (translation: how our cells recognize hostile bacteria/viruses/fungi/etc and alert the immune system to them).

Check it out:

Awesome!

(Credit – Nature Reviews Immunology)

Stuck between a big company and a startup place

I sometimes feel like I’m caught between two worlds.

On the one hand, I feel a strong tug towards the “Silicon Valley dream” of entrepreneurship. Friends of mine like Charles Ju, Founder and CEO of PlayMesh, the maker of one of the top iPhone games out there (iMafia) are living that dream – driven by one’s passions and one’s desire to engineer a product/service/technology to change the world – and heck, maybe get wealthy while you’re at it. It’s that drive which has pushed me to work with my buddies on projects like Xhibitr and Benchside.

On the other hand, I also feel a strong pull towards the corporate strategy world which I currently am involved in at my day job. The work is more stable (in the sense that I’m usually not dependent on the next round of funding for my livelihood), and the issues one explores are more strategic. It’s not desperately asking “will someone PLEASE buy my product?” or “how do I improve my product without spending any money because I’m out of cash?”. It’s literally answering “how do I shape an industry?” and “how do I change our business processes to be more responsive to customer needs?”

What makes the soul-searching all the more difficult is how different the two things are, and how different the people who work in each are. It makes it hard to just take the advice of friends like Charles or Serena who tell me to jump ship and head for startup-infested waters.

For starters, I’ve noticed that there are very different skills involved in the two groups. Big corporate strategy guys are more likely to value things like analysis (e.g., do the models support the proposed strategy? do we have the right numbers? what does that do to our cash and margin position?) and gameboarding (e.g., how will Microsoft or Google or Intel or Cisco react? how do the tech trends affect us/get shaped by us? who are the strategic partners/enemies who will care most about this?). I’ve found startup guys to more value execution over strategy (e.g., can we ship on time? can we get it done?) and boldness over analysis (e.g. is our product cool enough? will people care?)

This is not to say that big business guys don’t value execution or boldness, or that startup guys have no sense for analysis or gameboarding. And this is not even to say that either side is unreasonable. After all, startups need to execute before they worry about a perfect strategy, and big companies need to defend their sizable profit pool before they bet on a new one.

But that dynamic oftentimes frustrates me. When I’m doing the corporate strategy stuff, I grow frustrated at the conservatism and lack of boldness and progress. I am bothered by the bureaucracy and the lack of value placed on my scientific/technical knowledge.

And yet, when I talk with startup guys, I am troubled by what I see as a lack of emphasis on analysis and strategic thinking. I’m concerned that the heavy focus on execution and boldness traps them into bad decision cycles. I see an almost callous disregard of things which all big companies do as a matter-of-practice (e.g. legal, business development, and HR issues). And, to be perfectly honest, the lack of resources to fund anything (let alone the pretty decent salary I’ve come to expect) is not an exciting proposition either.

And so here I am. Stuck between a big company and a startup place, and not quite sure how much longer before I get crushed.

(Image credit) (Image Credit)

Technology can give you a boost

Why should we study science & technology? Because it can enrich our lives. Case in point: bra’s that lift your breasts when you’re sexually aroused/attracted to someone you’re talking to (HT: The Sun).

And of course, a visual representation of how it works (even though I’m quite sure this isn’t quite how it works):

 
Apparently, a Slovenia-based lingerie firm Lisca has designed a bra which reacts to your body heat (which presumably goes up when you see someone you’re attracted to). And the inspiration?

“Inventors at the Slovenia-based Lisca lingerie firm discovered the saucy side-effect by accident, while developing underwear that adapted to changing weather.”

So there you have it. Science & technology. Making the world a better place. For your breasts. (Although I can’t imagine you’d want this to happen if the weather just happens to be warm…?)

The Final Frontier

After a week of anticipation, I finally got to watch the new Star Trek movie on  Friday in IMAX.

I was a little bummed that I had arrived at the theater late (my girlfriend’s classmate foolishly chose not to take the cab with us and got lost trying to find the theater), forcing us to sit in the front (which doubly sucks when you’re watching a movie in massive IMAX). But those “issues” were quickly laid to rest.

Long story short – I think the movie was very good and well worth seeing (even for the IMAX premium). There was plenty for old-time fans (e.g. Leonard Nimoy’s reprisal of his role as Spock, many references to the “Original Series” characters and accomplishments, the Spock/Kirk dynamic, etc.) showing that the creators at least tried to re-boot the continuity with respect/deference to what had come before.

There was also plenty for newcomers and casual fans. On the most basic level, there was plenty of special effects and sci-fi eye candy (e.g. a new visual and tactical take on torpedo’s). And, on a character level, the series was a good primer on the legendary Captain James T. Kirk and his “merry” crew (Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, Chekhov, and Scotty).

But, what I found most astonishing was that JJ Abrams was able to do all of this – stay true to the original and still be able to bring in new/casual fans – without taking itself too seriously or resorting to too much camp. For a movie to be able to do this with a space opera (with all of the sci-fi and philosophical trappings) with a decades-long backstory is impressive, and defies all the expectations I had.

And, all I can say is, when is the sequel?

SNL on Stress Tests

The financial system is healthy. You have nothing to worry about — according to Geithner’s written part of the stress test. Hat tip to Greg Mankiw:

Goodbye, Scrubs

This past Wednesday was the last episode of Scrubs, a show which I had gotten hooked on in college.

What had initially gotten me hooked were the main character’s (JD, played by actor Zach Braff) fantasies and daydreams. They reminded me a great deal of the little daydreams I had while walking/driving from place to place or when doing something monotonous (although they were nowhere near as crazy as JD’s were in the show).

What kept me coming back season after season was watching the show’s characters mature from “little baby interns” into residents and then attending physicians, all the while dealing with issues and life choices which were becoming all too familiar for me.

And, before I knew it, I was watching it week-after-week with my college roommate and his girlfriend, sometimes even while doing problem sets (explains some of my lower grades, now that I think of it…) This culminated in an interview with Dr. Jon Doris [the interview article itself is here], the real person which Zach Braff’s lead character JD was based on (and one of the show’s medical consultants), about medicine and Scrubs for the Next Generation MD, a publication for pre-medical students that I wrote for.

Now, I know that Scrubs probably won’t be judged by future generations to be a work which stands the test of time for its greatness, but as Zach Braff’s character walked down the halls of Scrubs’ fictional hospital Sacred Heart, facing feelings of nostalgia from being confronted with old memories and “visions” of a possible happy destiny for himself and his friends, I couldn’t help feeling something similar.

The end of Scrubs, to me at least, was like saying goodbye to some friends I had gotten to know over the past few years. And so, yes, I will miss Scrubs and the hilarious antics of JD, Turk, Carla, Elliot, Dr. Cox, Dr. Kelso, Jordan, the Janitor (who’s name I won’t spoil if you haven’t seen it yet), Ted, and all the other characters I’ve gotten to know.

(Image Credit)

Sins of the Voter

A picture is (almost) worth $1.9 trillion.

Why so big? I trace it to three things:

• No politician ever wants to raise taxes. When’s the last time voters wanted to pay more in taxes? This is the most basic pitfall of liberal politics and politicians who have to find ways to defend or structure their tax proposals as “falling only on the rich/companies/lawyers/bad doctors/immigrants/[some other unpopular target group]”.
• No politician ever wants to cut programs. After all, every program/spending outlay has at least one big, well-funded fan. This is the most basic pitfall of conservative politics and politicians who have resorted to arguing that some programs are “wasteful” or “expensive or “bureaucratic” or “unnecessary”.
• Politicians aren’t rewarded for the state of the government years after their term. You don’t ever see a politician seriously campaigning on “I know my proposals are hurting your wallet today, but I swear, in 20 years, the economy and the budget will be awesome.”

So, liberal politicians fight a little less hard when Congress/the President/local governments cut/stem the rise in taxes, and conservative politicians fight a little less hard when Congress/the President/local governments spend more money on new programs, resulting in a (generally) growing budget deficit (depending on the rate of economic growth). And, depending on who controls the Executive/Legislative branches, one party will complain a little more loudly about the national budget deficit – at least until the parties switch positions of authority.

After all, does anyone remember when the Democratic Party (accurately) accused the Bush administration/Republican Party for causing record-high budget deficits, and the Republicans argued that budget deficits were necessary during a recession and could be controlled in the future? Funny how that’s changed more recently…

Now, before someone gets angry at me for attacking their favorite politician/policy proposal/political party, let me make it clear that this is not meant to criticize a particular politician or policy proposal. This is a criticism of a democracy where voters don’t want to engage in actual policy debate and are content with “debates” which amount to little more than liberals hurling “why do you hate the poor/minorities/the environment/healthcare” insults at conservatives and conservatives hurling “why do you love hurting businesses/taxing the American people/wasting taxpayer dollars” insults at liberals. This is a “debate” which has no purpose from an “intellectual” perspective (do you learn anything from hearing two politicians rip into each other with three-second soundbytes?) or from the perspective that a democracy ought to be formulating the best policy by combining the best ideas from the people (so if liberals love wasting taxpayer dollars and conservatives hate healthcare, what does that mean we do about expanding healthcare coverage?).

It is not sufficient to hear “this bill will give every American healthcare”. We must aspire to hear “this bill which costs $XX billion aims to give every American healthcare; it does so by doing A, which impacts proposals B and C, and limits our ability to spend money on the War on [Drugs/Terror/Juvenile Delinquency/Swine Flu]”. And until the public hears that type of information from policymakers, they are merely blind passengers on a car that someone else is driving.

So where does that leave us? I see three ways forward:

1. The public needs to demand more from their politicians and the press. Mainly, less soundbytes/talking points, more discussion of tradeoffs, numbers, and consequences.
2. Education in statistics and basic policy analysis needs to be introduced in high school. Governments lie, numbers don’t. But you can’t have a government by the people when said people have no idea how to look at numbers.
3. People should capitalize on the fact that policy wonk/wonk-lites of all political persuasions now blog and use the internet as a medium to engage in much more productive debate and discussion than traditional media outlets allow. People like Megan McArdle, Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Gary Becker & Richard Posner, and Tyler Cowen (among many others) maintain blogs which provide insightful commentary on the big policy debates/discussions of the day. They, of course, each have their own biases and perspectives to sort out (and what better way than to read other bloggers with dissenting opinions?), but the point is there is a way to get better information and insight than what the media currently provides and the public would be remiss to not use it.

Here’s hoping for that day when political soundbytes become a thing of the past…

(Chart credit) (Image credit)