Monthly Archives: June 2008

Winning & predicting

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Spotted the nice story about the lottery winner today, who had both dreamed about a win, and his daughter had been told by a mystery woman that she would win the lottery.

That got me thinking for fun about the science of winning and predicting, and the ability of people in this respect, which I’ve touched on before in a short paper from 1999, and a related blog on the practical value of luck involving 9/11.

One way of looking at this is to consider another theme, even if a coincidence is interesting from an academic point of view, its value is significantly amended by a real event. This the mystery woman’s prediction to the daughter now has significance because of the win. Thus, obviously, prediction increases in value when it turns out to be true. But the flipside of this the only way to get better at prediction is through trial and error (or the belief that lucky underwear can help at interviews?!).

Another feature of this story is the concept of lucky numbers, which I picked up on recently with the number 17. And by coincidence that’s one of the numbers in the lottery win (7, 16, 17, 23, 29, and 34).

What was a nice twist on this lucky number theme was on Saturday when I joined the Gala Casino in Leicester with Shirls, and was given an introductory tour by a nice lady. When I asked her what her lucky number was she replied ’15′ so no luck on number 17. But then she added, “the reason it’s 15 is that’s my birthday, which is tomorrow”.

 

Europe’s leading enterprise social computing consultancy

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Headshift is Europe’s leading enterprise social computing consultancy. Witness the new site design. Meet the people.

 

RSNA launches on Facebook

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Great to see RSNA, the Radiological Society of North America, on Facebook.

Not suprising to see Dr. Steve Chan congratulating them on the site, with both the radRounds social networking site and its linked presence on Facebook.

Also nice to see that Medicexchange has adopted a useful tag cloud search facility on its home page which allows you to easily search the top 100 keywords across radiology news.

Be interesting to see if radiology portal AuntMinnie responds to this web 2.0 trend.

LinkedIn contacts come to court

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“An ex-employee of recruitment firm Hays has been ordered to disclose details of his profile at social networking site LinkedIn. Mark Ions set up a rival agency and is accused of using LinkedIn to steal clients. He says Hays encouraged his use of the site.

“Ions worked for Hays Specialist Recruitment for six and a half years before leaving to run his own agency, Exclusive Human Resources, which he set up almost three weeks before resigning.

“Hays alleges that while still an employee, Ions copied and retained confidential information about clients and contacts of Hays. The firm says that Ions used that information for his own venture and that he breached his contract of employment. Hays went to the High Court in London to seek pre-action disclosure from Ions and his firm, i.e. an order to disclose information that Hays could use as the basis of a subsequent lawsuit.” (OUT-LAW.COM)

Hmm, I once worked as recruitment consultant for Montrose Technical recruitment, the sister company to Hays, back in 1990. I was rubbish at the job!

People 2.0

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Great to pick up the web 2.0 strategies 2008 award for Best New Web 2.0 Initiative on behalf of IT Counts with Carolyn Harrington.

Nice to meet up with Alex Ang again from RSS experts VWI Media, who told me he has recently partnered with WordFrame, the software which powers IT Counts. Other leading WordFrame sites include Social Media Today, a community for social media professionals.

Interesting to talk to Roderick Parks from Trampoline Systems and see how their software analyses emails and creates automatic profiles within the enterprise. An example of their software with a Trampoline visualisations video from rebecca kemp on Vimeo.:

Great to shake Euan Semple’s hand (liked the joke about Scottish beer drinkers).

All got me thinking about Enterprise 2.0, and the big Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week, with videos and podcasts now available.

 

The award blending in nicely in the foyer of our east London flat.

PS: 5 August Techcrunch UK mention of Trampoline and social networks for public sector workers.

Millenium Products

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Back in 1999 I worked on a project called Millenium Products based at the Design Council (page includes link to PDF with all submissions). Great team to work with I should say first and foremost, as there’s no such recognition on the Design Council’s site. And a nice logo, now only really seen on some black cabs in London for a new cab design. I remember one top engineering product who’s concise prize submission admitted, “it ain’t beautiful but it works” which still makes me smile.

To attain Millennium Products status, products and services had to:

  • Open up new opportunities
  • Challenge existing conventions
  • Be environmentally responsible
  • Demonstrate the application of new or existing technology
  • Solve a key problem
  • Show clear user benefits.

It was some job to go through all the entries, edit to word length, consult, and produce to time.

Caroline scores with baby Luca

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Great news from goal.com yesterday, with link to comments below:
 
AC Milan playmaker became a father for the first time last night when his wife Caroline gave birth to baby boy Luca Celico Leite.

The newborn is 51 centimetres tall, weighs 3.59 kilograms and is in perfect health.

“Mother and baby are fine,” read a statement on Milan’s website. “All the Milanisti in the world send their affectionate congratulations to the new parents.”
 
 
Now you really know why I was right to guess that Kaka’s wasn’t/isn’t going to Chelsea!
 

When comics were scary

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Read more: “The stories in these [comic] books, says David Hajdu, author of the new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America,” were unlike anything kids had seen before. They told tales of superheroes, but also of murder, crime and illicit romance. The illustrations could be shocking, and sometimes, the good guys didn’t win.”

 

 

Socialtext gets between the sheets with accountants

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Hmm, there’s also been some interesting discussion on this in the ICAEW’s IT Counts. Nice point that “we were in need of a wikified spreadsheet that had all of the utility of Google Docs without the datamining”.

PALO ALTO, CA – June 10, 2008 – Socialtext

Facebook in Reealitee

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Thanks to Ross, here’s BBC3′s Facebook spoof, hmm, funny.