Monday, October 25, 2004

Statistics For Data Entry: The Brave New Step [Slashdot:] 10:54:53 PM      Google It!.

Malcolm Gladwell on the instability of preference. A conflict prevented me from attending PopTech this year, but fortunately Doug Kaye was there with his microphone. The talk I most wanted to hear -- Malcolm Gladwell's -- was posted over the weekend. In this two-minute clip, Gladwell sums up the dilemma of the Aeron chair, a wildly successful product that might never have seen the light of day had the Herman Miller company believed its market research. From this parable and one other -- the New Coke fiasco -- he draws several conclusions. One is that preferences are highly unstable. Another is that, when you ask people to explain what they want, their preferences tend to shift toward the conservative, familiar, and easy to explain. ... [Jon's Radio] 10:51:28 PM      Google It!.

Buzzing the Web on a Meme Machine. The World Wide Web is the perfect Petri dish for memes, infectious ideas or any other things that spread by imitation from person to person. By By SARAH BOXER. [NYT > Technology] 10:36:18 PM      Google It!.