Lumosity: It's Not a Game, It's Exercise for Your Brain!

 

 

Lumosity: It's Not a Game, It's Exercise for Your Brain!

via Web Worker Daily by Mike Gunderloy on Aug 01, 2007

Way back in the dark days of computing, I used to conduct training classes for people who were seeing Windows and using a mouse for the very first time. In those classes, we insisted that solitaire wasn't a game: it was a training device to help people learn how to click and drag things.

I was reminded of this experience when I test-drove Lumosity, a "brain fitness program" that gives you access to a series of Flash-based exercises that bear a suspicious resemblance to some of today's casual games. Along with improving our physical fitness, web workers certainly need to keep their mental fitness tip-top, so I gave it a test drive.

The idea behind Lumosity is simple. They say that an NIH-funded study has demonstrated the proper training can improve memory, attention, and processing speed, and their exercises are designed to administer this training (while admittedly also letting you have a little fun). Click your camera on the birds, match the shapes, or help the farmer get past the monsters to water the flowers, and you'll be training your brain in short easy sessions, almost without knowing it.

Along with the exercises, Lumosity tracks your history and charts it to demonstrate how your brain is improving, and calculates a "brain performance index" for you. You can even sign up to participate in their ongoing research. Does it work? Darned if I know; you can read about the science at their site, or sign up for a two-week free trial to test it for yourself. After that it's $9.95 per month to keep using the service. And remember, if your boss catches you matching the colorful shapes, you're only trying to improve your performance on those boring work-related tasks.

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Google Presentation

As anticipated, Google has announced their new presentation tool, to be launched later this year. Both, TechCrunch and GigaOm have reports of this. It would be interesting to see how Google leverages its suite of office products. Users would definitely be attracted to the free offerings.

Hello World

For all you programmers out there, check this out!

Hello World Programs

Digital Lives

Have you ever noticed how 'digital' our lives have become? Utilities, TV, radio, newspaper, food products, transportation, education, entertainment and more: they all have been digitized or digitally controlled. It isn't just the products that we use, our lifestyles have become digitized too. Our means of communicating with family, friends and coworkers have all become digitized. Face-to-face meetings are dwindling. We talk about telecommuting, virtual offices, virtual families, on-line avatars and on-line communities as the way-to-go. I see us all being drawn into the depths of a digital world where individuals are nothing but screen names and feelings are simply icons. Relations are built and destroyed by keystrokes and mouse clicks.

On top of this, business models designed to benefit from such 'digital' worlds are becoming very popular and successful. A combination of successful 'digital' economies and 'digital' people will give rise to large digital societies. Is this all part of evolution, from prehistoric to digital?

For now, we worry about the how fast-food is making children obese, while the same children are laughing, crying, playing, running and living life, all without moving a muscle.

Tags: Digital Lives Evolution Digital Society

Evolution of Search

I seem to spend most of my Internet time searching for information. Whether it is news, pictures, music or videos, I'm always searching for something. Considering that the Internet is huge pile of information, it constantly needs to be organized to make that information accessible and meaningful. And most popular websites today, provide ways to organize and access a variety of information. All this got me thinking about 'search' itself. Where did it all start?

Search has existed for as long as there has been life on Earth. Search began as a means of survival for animals and humans. All living things searched for the basic needs of water, food and shelter. Different search techniques evolved in the process, like tracking the footprints of an animal would lead to food.

Once the basic needs are satisfied, new needs evolve. We are always seeking something. People seek friends, jobs, knowledge and wealth. Companies seek customers, suppliers and other resources. If a need exists, then we need a means to satisfy that need. And we seek the best way to do that. Therefore, we are always in a 'search' mode.

Over the years, as technology evolved, so have our needs. New search tools were born in the process. Books gave rise to indexes and tables of contents. The telephone gave rise to telephone directories. Every new technology generates new information and hence a need for a tool to manage that information.

With the volume of information that has been generated since the advent of the Internet, it is no surprise that we all seek efficient search tools. And companies that provide such tools are successful. Rest assured that when the next big technology comes, we will still be searching.

Man is a 'search' animal and the search will go on!

Tags: Evolution Search

From Writely to Google Docs and Spreadsheets

Writely is now Google Docs and Spreadsheets. I've been on Writely for only a week now and I was glad to see the familiar Google interface today. In the meanwhile, I had tried one other online wordprocessing and spreadsheet tool, thinkfree.com. This one includes presentations too, which Google lacks. Thinkfree seems to have a richer interface, but is definitely slower.

Like Om writes in his blog, Google definitely has an Office suite ready. I agree that it was time that Google did a cleanup act on all their offerings. Google Reader seems much better now like several bloggers are reporting.

This post is from the new Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It still doesn't let me post to my Blogger (beta) account.

Tags: Writely Google Docs and Spreadsheets Google Reader

YouTube. Sold!

With all the rumors going about the Google buyout of YouTube, I was almost convinced that Google will back out, given the risks of potential copyright issues. But, I guess everybody thinks differently. TechCrunch reports that it has officially confirmed this afternoon that YouTube was bought for 1.65 billion!

Tags: YouTube Google

Writing to Writely

I've finally activated my Writely account after reading this post on webworkerdaily.com. I've always been a Microsoft Office user. With all this talk about getting work done 'online', I've tried several tools to maintain to-do lists, project management tasks, calendars, bill payment, etc. But when it came to documents I was back to Office. Reading reviews about online wordprocessors or spreadsheets did not really motivate me. What intrigued me this time was the appreciation for a lack of features. When was the last time somebody appreciated you for not adding a feature.

That got me wondering, how much of Office features do I really use? Very little. I'm so used to seeing all these toolbars and menus that, I simply can't work without them. It's funny considering that I may have never used some of those features and probably never will. Anyway, now I'm typing away on Writely and we'll see how much I like not being loaded with features.

Oh, I just realized that I can't post to blogger.com if I was in the beta version, which I am. That's one feature I would have liked.

Tags: Writely Online Tools

Web Hangouts

Facebook is the ‘talk of the Net’, so to say. Everyone is writing about Facebook’s possible sale for over a billion dollars. And it’s not just Facebook. ‘Social Networking’ seems to be the most exciting thing happening on the Internet today.

Wall Street Journal’s article on Facebook talks about the popularity of such sites and refers to them as ‘Web Hangouts’. That’s an interesting term to use. I understand that creating virtual work environments could increase productivity by removing geographical and time constraints. But, where does online social networking take you (except for billions in advertising revenue for companies)? What happened to all those concerns about kids spending more time in front of TVs and computers? Now they are going to stay away from ‘real’ friends and create virtual friends.

Are we moving towards a virtual society, where nothing is real and everything is online and virtual. Soon there will be web families with a web dad, web mom, web sister, web brother and every other web relation.

Tags: Web Hangouts Web Society Facebook Social Networking

Virtual Culture

Just read, Tony Conrad’s post on webworkerdaily.com. He talks about how his company works around a virtual work environment. Teleconferencing, IM, blogs, wikis and other online tools allow employees to communicate with each other and work on the same projects from remote locations.

Tony Conrad also talks about steps they’ve taken to manage ‘culture’. What concerns me is that they use the same online tools to manage culture that they use to work. To me, that would only create a ‘virtual culture’ and there’s nothing wrong about that. I think virtual companies should focus on developing virtual cultures and not even try building traditional cultures. Eating pizza, while on a conference call, does not constitute a pizza party. That’s a ‘Virtual Pizza Party’.


Tags: Virtual Companies Virtual Culture

Web 2.0 Logos

Go2Web20 is a great place of start exploring the Web 2.0 world. There were several that I recognized and a lot more that were new to me. Two things caught my attention, the site names and their logos. Somehow, they had a distinctive Web 2.0 touch to them.

Here's another amazing collection of logos on Flickr.

For an analysis of the fonts used in some popular logos, visit FontShop, which declares lime green as the Official Color of Web 2.0.


Tags: Web 2.0 Logo Design

Life Ticker

In the several months since my last post, there have been vast changes in the 'Web World'. Web 2.0, online communities, AJAX, mashups, telecommuting and more, have become the buzzwords. Life ticks by so quickly and every new moment presents us with newer technologies, concepts and ideas. Staleness has been replaced by anticipation, enthusiasm and excitement.

To keep in pace with this ever-changing world, I've re-christened this blog, Life Ticker. I've also introduced a live ticker, that shows my life ticking away. The Life Ticker, should make you realize that the difference between the past, the present and the future is so small, that it is almost non-existent. The future effortlessly becomes the present and the present slides into the past. What is 'in' today, is 'out' tomorrow. And this applies to society, the economy, technology and everything on this planet.

In the end, only the past will remain, to be looked upon by the generations to come. We can only hope, that what we do in these fleeting moments of our 'present', will make our 'past' a memorable one.

Tags: Life Ticker Past Present Future

Reader or Listener?

Are you a reader or a listener? Peter F. Drucker brings up this interesting discussion in his book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century. We all know about right-handed and left-handed people. Right-handed people tend to do things better with their right hands and can feel awkward working with their left hands. The same can be said of left-handed people.

Similarly, people are either readers or listeners. There are some who can understand and react better if they read something and there are others who can perform better by listening. And if you ask a ‘reader’ to listen or a ‘listener’ to read, then you are looking for trouble. Recognizing someone as either a ‘reader’ or ‘listener’ can help you get the best out of the person. So, if your boss is a reader you are better off communicating via email or if your co-worker is a listener, walking up to their desk and talking may get you the desired results.

These characteristics can be observed in students too. Schools are more oriented towards listeners as it is easy for one teacher to talk to a group of students in a classroom. You’ll only see mediocre performance by students who are readers, while listeners might excel.

So, how do you identify someone as a reader or listener? How about starting with the relation between you and that person? Do you find it difficult to communicate, are there differences or you just can’t understand each other? If yes, maybe you are writing to a listener or talking to reader. So if you feel that you’ve been talking in vain, maybe it’s time to write. At the same time you should convey your preferred means of communication too.

Communicating in someone’s preferred way would do a lot in building relations. Whether its employer-employee, husband-wife, parent-child or teacher-student, all relations will turn for the better.

That makes me think, ‘Am I writing for a listener?’

Free Knowledge

The value of knowledge can’t be assessed by the amount of money paid to obtain it. Knowledge is valuable when it is applied at the right time, right place and for the right cause.

In the pursuit of knowledge we spend a lot of money attending universities and various training programs. In most cases, knowledge is delivered without the right tools to apply that knowledge. The question arises, what is it then that we should seek, knowledge itself or knowledge about the knowledge?

With the advent of the Internet most knowledge is freely available. Take the case of MIT’s OpenCourseWare. It is a publication of course materials from over 900 courses offered at MIT. All this for free! You get access to information that is actually used in MIT classrooms. So, here’s all the knowledge from a reputed institute available at the click of a button.

Does that mean nobody needs to attend classes at MIT anymore and can getaway by reading the online material? NO! Very few individuals have the capability to capture knowledge and at the same time realize its usability. Everyone else needs the guidance of an experienced teacher, who will train you to effectively apply the knowledge. That is why most of need to sit in a classroom.

But, can we strive to be one of the few who can realize the value of knowledge? Yes, if we consistently seek a means to apply the knowledge that we possess and seek the knowledge that we don’t possess. It is that attitude of constantly applying and seeking knowledge that will take us to that state. And then knowledge will be truly free!

Why?

‘Why: for what cause, reason, or purpose’.

The dictionary definition of ‘Why?’ seems pretty simple but give it a little thought and you’ll soon realize how powerful that one word is.

What prompted me to write this posting was watching a three-year old learn about the world around him? Every sentence that this kid spoke started with a ‘Why’. Why are we doing this? Why does my toy do this? Why are you being nice (or not) to me? And when you give him an answer, it comes right back at you with a ‘Why’ attached to it. In the process, he has sought the root cause of anything that interests him.

Now, take a look at an adult. How many do you know, who are driven by this curiosity? Look at yourself. How many times have you found yourself seeking the root causes by asking ‘Why’?
Why is someone successful?
Why is someone sad?
Why is a company making money?
Why is a company going bankrupt?
Why are some countries better off than others?
And the list goes on and on.

I believe that when you find an answer to any of these ‘Why’ questions, it makes you more aware of things. What you’ll find is, that with every additional ‘Why’ you are moving down a spiral path, at the bottom of which is your final answer. When you get there, you’ll realize how so many things that we do are related to one cause. Realizing this one cause lets you justify everything else. This kind of exercise would make an individual more knowledgeable and responsible.

Businesses can perform ‘Why’ tests on every process that takes place within the organization and see if the answers lead to their core values or objectives? If yes, they are on the path to success. If not, then that process needs to be redefined.

It’s amazing how much you can learn just by asking ‘Why’. Maybe we should start our days with one question.

Why am I what I am today?

True Globalization

Globalization has changed the global economy by breaking geographic barriers and allowing businesses to reach out to customers and supplier around the world. Lower operational costs and higher revenues have benefited the global organization. With the advent of newer communication technologies and less restrictive trade policies different world economies are better able to integrate and utilize their resources.

Here’s the flipside. All this liberalization has benefited another group of people. The one we would least consider while building such policies. They are the criminals, whose sole objective is to inflict harm and terror on society, both, for profit and pleasure. Surprising, isn’t it? With increasing globalization, governments are finding it all the more difficult to combat such criminals. The same policies and innovations that opened up new markets for businesses have also created new opportunities for criminals.

What kind of criminal activities have most benefited from globalization? Here are the top-five.

Drugs
Arms Trafficking
Intellectual Property
Alien Smuggling
Money Laundering

(Read Five Wars of Globalization By Moisés Naím for additional information).

Governments are spending billions of dollars battling these activities and are still unsuccessful in controlling them. One primary reason is the lack of information sharing and coordination between the governments of the various countries. Why would countries that are quick in developing trade policies refuse to collaborate to control criminal activities? The biggest obstacle is a lack of trust amongst nations.

But, why doesn’t this lack of trust restrict trade? Because trading partners realize the benefits of working together. The benefits are far greater than any mistrust that might exist. Can nations realize similar benefits in controlling illegal activities? Yes, they can! And when they do that and join hands together, not just for business, but also for a better world, that’s when we have achieved true globalization.

Wiki World

Ever wondered what the result of a combination of open-source, collaboration and lots of information would be? If you still haven’t guessed it, it’s the WIKI world. A wiki is an open-source web site that allows any user to add or edit content. That leads us to the WikiWikiWeb which is an ocean of such sites with wiki technology and wiki jargon like WikiGnome, WikiFairy and WikiGremlin. By the way, wiki means ‘quick’ or ‘super-fast’ in Hawaiian.

Curious about what all this means. Check out wikipedia.com. Published in many languages, it is a free, open-source encyclopedia. The website claims that the English version alone consists of more than 92.8 million words. There are over 745,000 articles in 83 languages. The search feature helps you locate articles of interest.

It is amazing how so much information, which can be edited by anybody, is streamlined, verified and presented in a proper manner. Want to know how? Go to wikipedia.com. There is detailed information about how all the information is managed.

Wikipedia is a wonderful lesson in collaboration. It is very difficult to see this level of collaboration is social and business environments. If only such a medium exists to allow people to collaborate - members of a community, employees of a company, suppliers, customers and more. Wouldn’t the world be a wiki-er (faster, smoother, better) place to live in?

Global Warming

Recent reports present a very bleak future for the environment. Global warming has once again taken the front seat in the media. A fresh series of storms and disappearing life forms have all been attributed to global warming. It is predicted that global warming will redefine the face of the Earth and also the lives of its inhabitants.

Apart from climatic changes, global warming has a tremendous impact on the economy. The monetary losses sustained due the impact of global warming are enormous. Considering the damages done by storms, this is absolutely true. And the indirect costs, like insurance, would also sky rocket. Insurers believe that the annual cost of global warming will hit $150bn a year - that's five times the annual earnings of the entire population of Nigeria.

Maybe it is already too late to reverse the damage that is already done. But, it is never too late to change our way of life and protect the Earth from future damage. Experts recommend using alternate fuel sources and energy-efficient appliances. For more information on such recommendations and also on government policies to control global warming check out the Greenpeace website.

Emotions Matter

Life is a roller coaster of emotions. Emotions define every moment of our lives. The decisions we make, the things we say and every thing else depends on our emotions.

Did you ever realize that there are thousands of words in the English language just to define different feelings? Check out this link for a sample of ‘Feeling Words’. These words are just a sampling of the variety of feelings that a person can experience during a lifetime. And to understand the fact that each of them actually affects your life is amazing.

Every since Daniel Goleman’s book on Emotional Intelligence was published in 1995, there have been tremendous strides towards understanding the effects of emotions on a person’s behavior. Research has confirmed that IQ by itself does not define a person’s standard of living. A person with a high IQ but with no control on emotions can almost never be a successful person. It has been proven that people with moderate IQ but with a good understanding of their emotions have been successful.

The concept of EI has spread to various areas of society. It has helped people be better parents, better spouses and better friends. Companies have adopted EI as one factor that affects employee performance and customer satisfaction. Employees are being trained to recognize and control their emotions. This helps improve the work environment and increase job satisfaction. You can find information on various EI research projects here.

Now consider a society where everyone can harness their emotions and act emotionally intelligent - a society where every person understands the value of happiness, grief, anger and all the other emotions that a person can experience. That would be the perfect world – free from all the social evils we face today.

Now this is real life. It is almost impossible for all people to control their emotions. But, each of us can at least try to harness our own emotions. If we can’t make the whole world a better place, we can definitely make our lives and the lives of the people around us so much better. That in turn will pave the way for a better world.

So, how are you feeling today?

Patented Lives

Take a look at the world around you - your clothes, shoes, furniture, TV, radio, food, toys and everything else that you see, touch or use. Have you ever realized that every one of these has been patented, copyrighted or trademarked by some person or company? All their designs, manufacturing processes and the machines that make them are someone else’s property. You can use them because you’ve paid for them. In effect the world around you has been patented and does not belong to you.

Patenting and other similar laws were primarily created to safeguard the interests of the inventors, artists or innovators, who conceptualize these products. While creating a means to reward these people through royalties, such laws are also thought to encourage new innovations.

But for the common person who is really not innovating all the time, he or she is literally paying someone to do just about anything in life. Shouldn’t we all break out of this shell? Come to think of it, you realize that there’s really no way out. You just cannot get by without using at least one patented item.

But, there’s one thing we all can do. We, as individuals, still control our minds and emotions. Maybe we should put these to better use and try to be more creative, more innovative and nicer people. These are priceless qualities that can never be controlled by any law. And at the end, everyone will profit!

Need to know more about patents, copyrights and other similar topics? Check out the World Intellectual Property Organization website.