William Peng

Real-time: Search or Discovery?

William — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:11:49 +0000

Lee Hower has an interesting blog post saying that “real-time” search is actually discovery:

Search is when you know basically what you’re looking for in advance, discovery is when you want things to be revealed to you. Search experts talk about lots of different forms of search… recall or recovery search (when you know a name or a brand and are trying to locate it), research search (trying to learn more about a topic or concept), competitive or comparative search (seeking similar concepts or objects to one already known), etc. Most of the products we call real-time search today involve consumers and companies wanting to find out what’s happening right now and perhaps explore the conversation or draw high level conclusions from it. That’s discovery.

Herb & Dorothy

William — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:04:36 +0000

Today, I was out with a friend, shopping for furnishings for her new apartment. While at CB2, it suddenly started to rain, which has been annoyingly typical these past few weeks. But we were hungry, so I used the Yelp iPhone app to find restaurants nearby. We settled on a cheap burger place called Soho Park, on Lafayette and Prince, and we sprinted over through the rain. The burgers were great, a solid 7 out of 10, The highlight was the endless bucket of fries, which came with a choice of two “speciality” dips. The service was shoddy, but the cheap price, good food, and easygoing company made up for it.

Afterwards, we wanted to see a movie, but we had already seen the good movies currently out, including Up and The Hangover. So I pulled up the Now Playing app on my iPhone, and it told me which movies were playing in which theaters nearby, and their Rotten Tomatoes rating. Given that we were in the SoHo/Greenwich Village area, we were able to find the nearby Cinema Village, a 3-screen cinema specializing in foreign and independent films. We quickly honed in on the documentary Herb & Dorothy, mainly because of its 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I’ve only had my new iPhone 3GS for a week now, and I’m really enjoying the fact that I can access the internet anywhere. Location-based services add a lot to the experience of going out and figuring out what to do. Rather than sit around wondering what is going on in the big and daunting city, location-based apps on the iPhone help me parse what I can do nearby, to certain broad or specific parameters. I firmly believe in planning in advance, but sometimes it’s nice to let the spur of the moment carry the day. I had read the hype about location-based services through blogs, but until last week, I had not had the opportunity to really experience it for myself.

We took the trek up 10 or so blocks to walk off the heart-stopping dinner, and made it just in time to buy student tickets (only $7.50 each!) and squeeze into the small, cozy theater at Cinema Village. I went into the movie with an open, but skeptical mind. While the movie did receive critical acclaim, I was skeptical of the synopsis of “documentary about two art collectors.”

I was pleasantly proved incorrect. Herb & Dorothy is a documentary about the most charming couple, Herbert and Dorothy Vogel. Herb was a postal clerk for the USPS and Dorothy was a librarian with the Brooklyn Public Library. They spent every moment of their time outside of work to collect art and engage with the artist community in New York City. With only their income to work with and the relationships they built with the artists, they built on that passion and built a massive collection of over 4,000 unique works. They collected art that they liked, not necessarily what was trendy at the time, and over the course of half a decade, they showed the world that you don’t have to be rich to collect art. I’ll leave the details at that, since I don’t want to spoil the documentary for those that want to see it.

I had a discussion with my friend Andy yesterday over dinner about whether art appreciation is something that we can learn, something that we are born with, something that comes with age and maturity, or a combination of the three. I think it definitely helps to have an academic education of the history of art and the techniques behind it to provide a framework to interpret art. One particular type of art, conceptual art, places an emphasis on the concepts or ideas behind a work of art over its aesthetics. But in general, I think that if you appreciate art with an open mind, you can begin to form your own perceptions and opinions about a piece. I was never that into art; when I was younger, I was infinitely bored by museums. But walking around the RRE offices these past few weeks, I surprised myself to find that I would stop to look closer at pieces of art hanging on the walls. After seeing Herb & Dorothy, I will go to museums with a renewed sense of interest in the art, and the artist behind the piece of work.

Herb and Dorothy believed in every artist they bought from. They didn’t believe in selling their art for profit. They collected art because they loved art. and they went beyond the role of a “collector,” and established real relationships with the artists. So the ultimate, sappy, cliche lesson here is to do what you love. And if you aren’t doing what you love, make time for it. Work 9-5 on your day job, but take an hour or two at the end of each day to do something you enjoy.

A second, auxiliary lesson is to give everyone a chance. When talking to someone, I don’t believe in trashing that person’s beliefs or values, and this is something that I have tried my best to transfer to my first month at RRE Ventures. The entrepreneurs whom I talk to most likely have more experience than I do, so I am a listener first, and questioner second. I will go into a meeting with my own beliefs, but I try not to let those beliefs stay rigid. I am always pleasantly surprised when I talk to people who are experts in what they do, and I can refine my beliefs and values.

So this is less of a review than a recommendation. I don’t think that movies like this can be reviewed. They are like art – you interpret them your own way, and they have different effects on each person. So, go see Herb & Dorothy. But don’t expect explosions that keep you at the edge of the seat. Do expect to be at the edge of your seat for a thought-provoking documentary about a quirky couple who refused to stop doing what they love.

Stop Password Masking

William — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:52:50 +0000

Jakob Nielsen implores web developers to stop masking passwords in web input forms. I have to admit I never thought about it this way.

Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn’t even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.

The only case when you would need to mask passwords is when the user is in a public space, in which case Jakob proposes there be a check box to mask the password in the input form. (via Kottke)

How Cloud Computing Works

William — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:15:57 +0000

Cloud computing is all the rage these days, but how does it actually work? The visualization of how cloud computing works, and the difference between cloud computing and traditional hosting. The key word here is scalability.

Fever: Social Aggregation and Curation

William — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:02:39 +0000

I know many words have already been written about Fever, but I’d like to provide my own impressions of Fever after a few days of usage. Rather than try to provide “first impression” type reviews, I like to let my thoughts simmer.

Fever is developed by Shaun Inman, who also developed the Mint site analytics package. The basic mentality behind Fever is that it helps you curate the most important content from a large number of feeds. It does this with an additional top layer of automatic aggregation and curation on top of a traditional RSS reader. Fever semantically looks at which stories have been posted most often and lets those rise to the top. Fever distinguishes between two types of feeds: “kindling” and “sparks.” Essential, must-read feeds are designated “kindling,” and supplementary feeds that mostly repost links are designated “sparks.” Sparks ignite Kindling raising the temperature of items and links that should not be missed.

Fever effectively links into the crowd mentality and social reposting, reblogging, etc. to let the most popular stories rise to the top. It would be very interesting in the future to see if Shaun can integrate external sources such as Twitter into the algorithm. Currently, the “Hot” news items are driven by my own biased, selected feeds. I have a good sample of tech blogs, but I have perhaps too many tech blogs. Tech stories dominate the Hot feeds view, and I’d like to see more stories about non-tech news, like design and ice cream. Right now I’m being overwhelmed by the same article over and over. In the past few days, it’s all been about the iPhone 3GS. Granted, this is a once a year event, so I may need to use Fever for a longer period of time to make a more accurate judgment about the spread of stories.

Maybe I’m being lazy and spoiled, and want Fever to do everything for me, but I don’t think that’s the case. Some topics simply have more feeds available. Ideally, Fever should be able to aggregate information from publicly available social trends, such as Twitter, Google Trends, and maybe even Technorati. Furthermore, Fever should allow me to assign a weight to certain feeds, so that certain feeds will have more influence on whether a topic reaches “Hot” status.

One of the other benefits of Fever is that I can access it anywhere I have an internet connection. Fever also comes with a special iPhone/iPod touch-optimized view. My only complaint here is that the performance is a little slow compared to Google Reader. It might be that I’m on a cheap hosting plan on a shared server, but the feed refresh rate is slower than NetNewsWire and there is a slight half-second lag when clicking on a group of feeds in the sidebar. Google Reader’s performance here is much better.

It is clear that Fever is not for everyone. The basic cost structure and installation process means that there is a limited niche audience. Fever is not a hosted solution, meaning you have to run it on your own PHP/MySQL compatible server. The installation requires a pre-purchase, initial server compatibility test. You get a compatibility confirmation code, which you use to buy Fever. After you buy Fever, you receive an activation key to finish the installation. Despite the complex setup process, the final install was quick and painless.

Also, in the era of free, hosted solutions, the lack of a trial, non-hosted nature, and the $30 price point will deter many potential adopters. I’m sure Shaun Inman probably thought this through thoroughly, and arrived at this decision that was best for his circumstances as a one-man developer team. And a recent tweet by Shaun says that sales are going so well that PayPal has launched an investigation to make sure things are okay. Not bad.

Fever is a definite contender in the crowded feed reader space. It has disrupted the way feed readers aggregate information, and for now, it has my vote.

Ten Things Not to Do in New York City

William — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:46:08 +0000

This list of Ten Things Not to Do in New York City is surprisingly accurate. If you’re going to visit NYC, this list is a must read. NYC is too interesting to waste time in tourist traps.

Eric Schmidt Commencement Speech

William — Sun, 24 May 2009 16:54:37 +0000

“You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready.”

– Eric Schmidt, Carnegie Mellon Commencement Speech

In Praise of Dullness

William — Thu, 21 May 2009 05:55:45 +0000

David Brooks has an interesting Op-Ed in the NYTimes about the characteristics most highly correlated with successful CEOs. The results surprised me, since at first glance they are counterintuitive.

What mattered, it turned out, were execution and organizational skills. The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours.

In other words, warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.

They, too, found that extroversion, agreeableness and openness to new experience did not correlate well with C.E.O. success. Instead, what mattered was emotional stability and, most of all, conscientiousness — which means being dependable, making plans and following through on them.

via Marquis.

Dreaming in the Shower

William — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:54:29 +0000

Cameron Moll has an interesting blog post up about the “creative pause” we experience in the shower. Creative pause is the “shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether.” You move from a structured thinking to a stream of thinking.

Of course, when I want to complete a structured task, I don’t want to be in the shower. The desk is better environment for completing structured tasks. But the shower is great for brainstorming in an unstructured manner. Shifting your brain into a more relaxed state allows you to attack a problem from a different direction.

I find that a lot of my most creative thinking happens in the shower. The shower helps me develop my thoughts in new directions. It’s also a place for me to escape from stress or cluttered thoughts. These two ideas build on the fact that deliberate breaks can be helpful to problem solving.

There’s something about showering that tends to spawn new ideas which may not occur otherwise. And the frequency with which this occurs seems to suggest that perhaps the occurrence isn’t merely happenstance, but instead a decent model for what has been called “creative pause” — the shift from being fully engaged in a creative activity to being passively engaged, or the shift to being disengaged altogether.

Cameron continues to explain why the shower seems to be so effective at dislocating our minds from a hectic world:

There’s little opportunity for distraction.
Minimal mental engagement is required for the the task at hand.
Showering creates a “white noise” effect.
A change of scenery sets the stage for the unexpected.

I wonder how, or if, we can more efficiently harness the power of creative pause. Sometimes I think I should install a waterproof note-taking device inside the shower to record all my thoughts as they happen. But perhaps the conscious act of writing down what you are thinking destroys the creative pause? Because my thoughts in the shower flow quickly and randomly, jumping from topic to topic, the deliberate action of writing something down could disrupt the flow of thoughts. The action of writing is the distraction in point #1 above, and it involves the mental engagement in point #2.

In this way, creative pause is similar to dreaming. My high school chemistry teacher once told me that the best way to solve chemistry problems is in your sleep. He would give up on difficult problems and go to sleep. He would wake up in the middle of the night with a solution, and frantically scribble down the solution on a pad at the side of his bed, as his dreams slipped away.

This may also be evidence that, at some point in the night, you should go to sleep rather than go for an all-nighter. But that’s for a different blog post.

Of course, this is all pure speculation, so I may be completely wrong. I haven’t tried taking notes in the shower (yet). Perhaps the best and only way is to jump out of the shower, wake up from dreaming, and write as fast as you can. This means I need to learn how to write in shorthand.

Dollar ReDe$ign

William — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:41:47 +0000

Michael Tyznik redesigned the U.S. paper money to a much more modern and functional design. Looks a lot like European money, which has great design. Here’s his rationale in the redesign:

Here are the main ideas in this design: Money and the color green are inextricably intertwined in American culture. I think itd be a mistake to remove green as the primary color. Instead, each bill has a brightly-colored holographic strip embedded into it which contains the denomination. The width of this strip also changes with the denomination. This introduces an element which makes each bill extremely easy to identify. There is also braille denoting the bills denomination on the holographic strip.

The redesign is part of a project to “rebrand” the dollar bills. Also check out the redesigns by Richard Smith and Michelle Haft.

Update: Aegir Hallmundur at The Ministry of Type relates the potential new bill designs to European bill designs, in particular the varying bill sizes depending on the denomination of the bill.