http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/08/hbrs-idea-watch-strange-but-tr.html

start at 4.25 on the pod cast for  "Defend your research from Harvard Business Review/ Sept 2010 - interview from Leif Nelson Prof @Berkeley"

Research on people watching TV shows - interrupted with commercials and non-interrupted; expected outcome would be that people enjoy more the one that was not interrupted.

However, pretty strongly people enjoyed the TV with commercials more, good news for advertisers.

Reason and rational is adaptation.  What is this.  Consider a 10 minute massage, the massage gets less enjoyable as time goes on. if you cut the session in half and start again, the enjoyment increases.

Why do people like and pay for premium channels without ads - plots are complex and provide natural interruption by stitching story lines. Designed to keep enjoyed high.

Smart take and counter intuitive research

A weekly post cast by Jim Hopkinson who works for Wired.com

http://thehopkinsonreport.com/2010/08/19/episode-118-social-media-is-the-new-rock-and-roll/comment-page-1/#comment-88918

This one is a thought providing piece on Social Media saying that SM is for this generation the rock and roll of previous generations - worth listening to.

my view is that I like the analogy draw up but I am not sure if I agree with it all but it did made me think.

One aspect to consider is why the youth love technology/ social media?  One answer is (based on a massive amount of real research by FT/ Orange) is that technology/social media gives kids a place to go where parents don't have control.

This idea fits well with what the article says and to the roots behind other generational gaps/ ideals/ fashions.

If social is a place where "we" go today as parents don't have control, with all these new controls there will be new opportunities as the new generation or youth find a place where their parents (or heaven forbid) grandparents are not.

Image from Greenpeace

31 March 2010  Greenpeace criticises coal-fuelled internet cloud on the day the iPad goes live and the web is awash with articles following yesterdays views based on the Greenpeace report that t he 'cloud' of data which is becoming the heart of the internet is creating an all-too-real cloud of pollution as Facebook, Apple and others build data centers powered by coal. “If considered as a country, global telecommunications and data centres behind cloud computing would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the United States, China, Russia and Japan” Greenpeace have said.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/ipad-cloud-climate-change-290310

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/make-it-green-cloud-computing

"The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power," said Greenpeace, which argues that web companies should be more careful about where they build and should lobby more in Washington for clean energy.  

Most Web companies are trying, if it is hard enough I don’t know, however I have a different take.

We have become a society that wants on demand, instant, immediate and therefore we need to keep all the servers (data centres) powered up and disks spinning.  In reality, as I have written before this is powering the “dark screens”, the one that you are not yet viewing, if you are reading this then it is lit.

A solution surly is to put most data on dark disks – ones that are spun down, stopped and unpowered.  If you request info from one of these disks, you are asked to donate to a carbon fund or wait 5 minutes while it powers up. The choice of fuel is not the argument or solution (sorry Greenpeace), getting stuff switched off and powered down – even deleted, by using intelligence in the data centre and technology surly is!

The whole debate about efficiency, components, materials, shipping, packing, reuse and recycling is another problem.

March 5th 2010