Nearly A Nerd.com

Similarities and parallels between Physics and Marketing

The title of this seven minute TED Talk from Dan Cobley is “What physics taught me about marketing.”  Dan draws parallels between marketing and four major principals in physics.

1.  Rearranging Newton’s Second Law gives us acceleration equals force over mass. Meaning the larger a particle is, the more force it takes to change direction.  The same applies to brands.  The bigger it is, the harder it is to reposition it.

2.  Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says it is impossible to measure the position and momentum of a particle because the very act of measuring it, changes it.  In marketing, the act of measuring consumers changes them.  Marketers should measure what consumers actually do, not just what they say they do.

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Posted in Business, Science | No Comments »

Closing Hotmail accounts

No one will ever know why I kept a Hotmail account from 1996 until today. Laziness probably.

Here is how to close a Hotmail email account:

1. Open following link:

Delete MSN, Hotmail or other Windows Live Account

If the above link doesn’t work for you, go to following link:

Close Windows Live Account

2. Enter your mail ID and password.

3. Click on “Close account” button.

4. Your account will be reserved for 270 days so that if you want to re-activate it, you can do within 270 days. After 270 days it’ll be deleted permanently and you’ll not be able to re-activate it.

(Information found at askvg.com)

Posted in Email | No Comments »

Remotely Experience Burning Man 2010

Right now, if you didn’t get a ticket and aren’t there, the Internet is probably the best way to experience the desert event known as Burning Man. So here’s a ripoff expansion/refinement of Laughing Squid’s post “How To Experience Burning Man 2010 Remotely”

Live Broadcast

On Twitter

Flickr Photos

Other:

Burning Blog
Facebook
Burning Man Information Radio (BMIR.org)
IRC (#burningman on irc.freenode.net)

Posted in Art | 2 Comments »

Screw-off-the-other-end water bottle

Clean Bottle is your typical reusable water bottle except both ends unscrew so you can clean the nasty out.  It’s $10.

Unless these guys hold hardcore patents, I suspect all your reusable water bottles will soon be doing this on the other end of their containers.  If it hasn’t already begun.

Posted in Design | No Comments »

NYC underground: 80s vs 00s

I’m a country fella from Missouri and have only been to NYC once.  Even so the appearance of The City’s underground has changed quite a bunch from the 80s, especially if movies like The Warriors and these pictures from 24Flinching — “detailing life on and in the New York City subway in the 1980’s” – have even a shred of truth.  Can you tell the pictures shot in the 80s from the two subway pics I shot in 2005? Dumb question.

Posted in Photography | No Comments »

Hand-cranked wheelchairs from P.E.T. – Personal Energy Transportation

It took the NYC based internet culture program Rocketboom to point out the big-time, non-profit headquartered in my backyard of Columbia, Missouri.

Personal Energy Transportation (or P.E.T.) makes hand-cranked wheelchairs for people have lost the use oftheir legs due to polio, landmine injury, etc.

Even though most of their volunteers here work out of a garage, P.E.T. is a world-wide 501c3 organization with wheelchairs in dozens of counties.

Posted in Video | No Comments »

Blue Microphone’s Mikey 2 still not available

The web page for Blue Microphone’s plug-in mic for iPhone — known as Mikey 2 — still says its release date is 8/20/10, but the buy now text is not clickable.

The opening blurb on Mikey 2′s product page:

The all-new Mikey is the perfect tool for mobile recording. Featuring two custom-tuned Blue capsules for stereo recording, a line-input, USB pass through and a stylish updated 230-degree rotating design. Mikey’s three gain settings allow for a versatile recording experience for everything from a loud concert to a whisper. Record lectures, voice notes, live music, interviews, and more. Mikey also comes with its own soft carrying pouch for convenient storage and protection while on the go. Mikey turns your iPod or iPhone into the coolest mobile recording device around!

Pretty much ready to buy. Even called Blue a while back asking about it. Anybody have the lowdown?

Posted in Software, iPhone | 1 Comment »

National Parks Infinite Photo from NatGeo

The National Parks Infinite Photo page at NationalGeographic.com says:

Zoom in on a spectacular national park photo to reveal hundreds more photos making up the original. Then zoom again at each level for an endless array of images, each submitted by users to My Shot.

This description actually misrepresents the thing a little — as do my screenshots of it below.

It starts with an image from a National Park.  Click on a section of it to zoom in.  Now that zoomed section is comprised of a mosaic of many, many tiny photos similar in color to the area you zoomed in on. Click again and the tiny photos get larger. Once more and it zooms even further to show 16 regular photos.  Click on a single photo and you’re back to doing the whole process again.

It is an endless mosaic similar to Apple’s thing that turns an iPhoto library into a Mosaic Screensaver — but with National Park photos.

Posted in Mac, Photography | No Comments »

AT&T seemingly behind on notifying about iphone 4 shipments

Picked up my iPhone 4 from the AT&T store in Jefferson City, MO on July 17, 2010.  Today is August 3rd.  About 30 minutes ago I received this email from AT&T saying my iPhone 4 has now SHIPPED.  That’s nice.

Posted in iPhone | No Comments »

The dreaded ‘Idea’ — Part 1

Ah, the “Idea.” Hardly will we find anything more polarizing.

For seemingly half of us, just the word “idea” alone seems to conjure high-mindedness, nobility and is lauded up above so much else. The other half snubs/thumbs their noise at the word and “ideas” hardly even register as a time-waster anymore because they are automatically dismissed, ignored.

Nevertheless, this series of posts are a veritable dump of notions, products, services, improvement and “ideas”. I don’t really want to approach any developers and entrepreneurs I know with any one, all, or any combinations of these. But I also tire of waiting. Blogging them seems a more proper place to toss them out and see if anybody — known or unknown to me — bites.

If interested, I prefer you contact me first before pursuing, but at this point, I want most of what you may read to get on some sort of track that I almost want you to just take them and run.

The following vagaries may undergo many published updates and revisions. The intent is to get them out there. You may scratch your head on some, but hopefully they could lead you, and us, to betterment.

Click below to jump into a slew of stuff. Part 1 concerns Twitter and iPhone/iPod iOS & Apps.

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Posted in Business, Internet, Twitter, iPhone | No Comments »