Showing posts with label Tool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tool. Show all posts

December 14, 2012

See Yourself In The Future

Now seeing how you will look in the future is not just theoretical anymore. 

Merrill Edge (Merrill Lynch investing + Bank of America banking) has an online digital program that shows how you will look aged over time. 

They developed this as tool to encourage people to save more money for retirement by bringing home the message that you will not be young (and beautiful) forever. 

The Face Retirement tool asks for your age and gender, takes your picture, and then displays snapshots of how you will look over the course of your lifespan. 

I tried it and my smiling face was quickly tranformed into an old man with sagging skin, wrinkles, and more. 

My wife seeing those pictures says to me (even though we already save for retirement), "We better really start investing seriously for retirement!" -- gee, thanks! ;-)

And thanks Merrill Edge, you scared us straight(er) by looking at our own mortality, face-to-face. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Judy Baxter)

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June 28, 2012

Behind The Toothbrush, A Human Being

In the morning, I like to stop at the food court for some coffee (iced, not hot). 

This week, while heading down the stairs to the coffee stand, I ran into this lady cleaning the stairs. 


As I excused myself to her and got the nod to run past, I realized she was cleaning each stair not with a machine, or a mop, but with with a hand utensil that was basically like a toothbrush.

And as you can see, she was cleaning more just a couple of steps, but rather a whole staircase like this.

I had to take a second-take at this whole notion--I could not believe she was cleaning each step--one at a time--step by step--from one side to the other--bent over like this with this little tool-like toothbrush.

I wanted to stop and ask her about it--why she had to do it this way? But I was too embarrassed and more important didn't want to embarrass her.

I took this photo discretely not to shame anyone, but to point out the plight of workers in our society.

No one--NO ONE--should have to bend over a staircase or floor or anything like this and clean inch by inch--with a toothbrush!

When I think about it--it is shameful--no, it is enraging--that anyone would treat other human beings like this.

Let's face it--this is not done to get the stairs clean--there are machines and more appropriate hand tools--scrubbers, steamers, scrappers that can do that. Heck, I'd bet that we can modify a iRobot Roomba to eventually do it.

So this is not just about getting the job done, but perhaps about power, degradation, servitude, and even an element of abuse.

I felt terrible for this lady--I almost wanted to tell her to stop, but I assume, she has a family to feed too and has to do what she has to do.

But whoever is employing her and making her do this back-breaking work this way, as my grandmother used to say--G-d sees everything!

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

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August 20, 2011

Social Media: Closer Together or Further Apart?

This satirical video with lyrics sung by Elliott Yamin (from American Idol) shows a relationship where interest in everything social media outweighs the real social relationship between the two people (boy and girl).

Even sitting right next to each other, they are texting and skyping as if they are a thousand miles away!

The boy keeps trying to get the girl to pay him some real attention--waving his arms, closing her computer lid, and even pretending to shoot himself--but nothing works. The girl is in social media heaven--or hell--and she just keeps on going online: Texting, Tweeting, Facebooking, Yelping, Grouponing, Blogging, Digging, YouTubing, and on and on.

The boy looks miserable and is proverbially screaming out: "hello, can't we just be together for real?" But to her, the reality is attained ironically through connecting on social media.

While the video exaggerates the relationship dynamics as impacted by social media, it does acutely point out the many ways that connecting with others has changed in the age of social computing.

But is the change mostly positive or negative--does social media draw us closer or does it in a sense drive a virtual wedge between us?

This past week, the Wall Street Journal (16 August 2011) reported that studies show that "digital communications can lead to more or better friendships online and off, greater honesty, faster intimacy in relationships, and an increased sense of belonging...on the whole, technology appears to enhance real-world relationships."

in particular, social media seems to be a type of panacea for shy and anxious people who report feeling "significantly less shy, more comfortable, and better accepted by their peers" when they are online than off. Additionally, the "frequent communications online could serve as a practice for in-person social interactions."

When people are online, they feel perhaps safer, freer, and able to be themselves and this helps them connect with others in a way that is maybe more real than the facade they hide behind in the "real world."

This can work in negative ways too like when people get behind the wheel of the car, they sort of think they are anonymous and you see them cursing, speeding, etc. In this case, they let their inhibitions go, and in it's place you get things like road rage. Online too, you have creeps come out and say and do inappropriate things behind the veil of anonymity.

Social media provide tools for us to connect with others. And like any tool, social media can be used for good or bad: On the positive side, it can help us to reach out to others and connect, share, collaborate, and innovate. On the negative side, it can be used as escape from reality or even to conduct unethical or criminal activities.

How we use social media is up to us--the potential to go in either direction is very powerful.

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August 12, 2011

To Follow Or Not To Follow

Theskystallione

Twitter is a great streaming feed for news and information, but what you get depends on who you follow.

While Twitter does provide suggestions based on whether they are "promoted" or who you already follow (i.e. follow Joe because they are "followed by" Julia), it doesn't tell you a lot of information about them except their Twitter handle, short profile, location, basic stats, etc.

A new service called Twtrland helps you decide who to follow by providing lot's more information and displaying it in an organized fashion--simply plug in the Twitter handle you are interested in knowing more about and you get the following:

1) Basic Info--Picture, profile, stats on follow/follower/tweets

2) Top Followers--Let's you know who else (from the who's who) is following this person.

3) Advanced Stats--Provides measures on how often he/she gets retweeted, tweets per day, retweets, etc.

4) Graph of Content Type--Displays in pie chart format the type of content the person puts out there: plain tweets, links, pictures, retweets, replies and more.

5) Samples of Content by Category--Examples of this persons tweets are provided by category such as: famous words, plains tweets, pictures, links, retweets, and mentions.

I like the concept and execution of Twtrland in organizing and displaying tweeters information. However, I cannot really see people routinely taking the time to put in each Twitter handle to get this information. Making a decision a who to follow is not generally a research before you follow event. The cost-benefit equation doesn't really make sense, since it doesn't cost you anything to follow someone and if you don't like their tweets, you can always change your mind later and unfollow them if you want.

Overall, I see Twtrland more as a profiling tool (for research or interest) by getting a handy snapshot of what people are doing/saying online in the world of micro-blogging, rather than a decision support system for whether I should add someone to my follow list or not.

(Source Photo: Twtrland Profile of Sylvester Stallone, Rocky!)

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July 14, 2009

A Call to IT Arms

Recently, I heard a colleague say that we should view IT not as a cost center, but as a resource center—and I really liked that.

In fact, IT is a cost center and a resource center, but these days there is an overemphasis on it being a cost center.

On the negative side, people seem to like to criticize IT and point out the spectacular failures there have been, and in fact, according to Public CIO “a recent study by the Standish Group showed that 82% of all IT project were either failures or were considered challenged.”

This is the dark side of IT that many would like to dwell on.

However, I would argue that while we must constantly improve on IT project delivery, IT failures can be just a point in time on the way to tremendous success and there are many of these IT successes that we benefit from in big and small ways every day.

Moreover, it may take 1000 failures to achieve that one great breakthrough success. That is the nature of innovation and experimentation.

Of course, that does not mean we should do stupid or negligent things that results in failed IT projects—we must do our best to be responsible and professional stewards. But, we should not be afraid to experiment and fail as a healthy part of the creative process.

Thomas Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

So why are we obsessed with IT failures these days?

Before the dot com bust, when technology was all the rave, and we enjoyed the bounty of new technologies like the computer, cell phones, handhelds, electronics galore, the Internet and all the email, productivity software and e-commerce and business applications you could ask for, the mindset was “technology is the engine that drives business.” And in fact, many companies were even changing their names to have “.com” in them to reflect this. The thinking was that if you didn’t realize the power and game-changing nature of technology, you could just as well plan to be out of business in the near future. The technologies that came out of those years were amazing and you and I rely on these every day.

Then after the dot-com burst, the pendulum swung the other way—big time! IT became an over zealous function, that was viewed as unstructured and rampant, with runaway costs that had to be contained. People were disappointed with the perceived broken promises and failed projects that IT caused, and IT people were pejoratively labeled geeks or techies and viewed as being outside the norm—sort of the societal flunkies who started businesses out of home garages. People found IT projects failures were everywhere. The corporate mindset changed to “business drives technology.”

Now, I agree that business drives technology in terms of requirements coming from the business and technology providing solutions to it and enabling it. But technology is also an engine for growth, a value creator, and a competitive advantage!

Further, while some would argue these days that IT is “just a tool”, I would counter that IT is a true strategic asset to those who understand its role in the enterprise. I love IT and I believe we all do and this is supported by the fact that we have become basically insatiable for IT. Forrester predicts U.S. IT budgets in 2009 will be in the vicinity of $750 billion. (http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/59200-it-market-us-decline-51-percent-2009-researchers.htm) Think about what you want for the holidays—does it have IT in it?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was about how the homeless are so tied to technology that many have a computer with Internet access, even when they don’t have three square meals a day or a proper home to live in.

Another sign of how critical IT has become is that we recently stood up a new Cyber Command to protect our defense IT establishment. We are reliant indeed on our information technology and we had better be prepared to protect and defend it.

The recent White House 2009 Cyberspace Policy Review states: “The globally-interconnected digital information and communications infrastructure known as “cyberspace” underpins almost every facet of modern society and provides critical support for the U.S. economy, civil infrastructure, public safety, and national security.”

It's time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction and to view IT as the true strategic asset that it is.


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