Sleep is, or should be, making a workplace comeback according to the Vancouver Sun.

Cisco Systems and Google are just two companies that have recently purchased Energypods, egg-shaped recliners that block noise and light, which employees use to grab quick naps during working hours. Google has even enlisted the services of a napping expert.

As the New York Times explains,

“There is a cultural bias against sleep that sees it as akin to shutting down, or even to death,” according to Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School and director of the Sleep Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Most people, Dr. Ellenbogen says, think of the sleeping brain as similar to a computer that has “gone to sleep” — it does nothing productive. Wrong. Sleep enhances performance, learning and memory. Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate aha! moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.

Dr. Ellenbogen’s research at Harvard indicates that if an incubation period includes sleep, people are 33 percent more likely to infer connections among distantly related ideas, and yet, as he puts it, these performance enhancements exist “completely beneath the radar screen.” In other words, people are more creative after sleep, but they don’t know it.

So where do you get your Power Napping Pod For The Office

Perhaps you can talk the boss into buying a couple of MetroNaps EnergyPods. These comfortable looking chairs conform to your body, while a “sphere of silence” keeps the clickity-clack of keyboards and ringing phones from disturbing your brief beauty rest. Power naps aren’t supposed to be long, and the Energypod keeps you from drifting off to Slumberland by using a combination of vibrations and alarms to wake you after 20 minutes. The EnergyPod looks like something straight out of Sleeper and will set you back $8,000.

Related: 10 Benefits of Power Napping, and How to Do It

Post from: BPWrap

John Brandon asks this morning whether interest in Google Chrome is already waning. He feels that:

People use IE because it comes pre-installed and does mostly what they need it to. Walk into an office and glance around — you will see a lot of IE. Those who know better use Firefox because it is more stable, more secure, and faster. Where does that leave Chrome? I think as a third option for early adopters. But those who just need to get work done, who use Gmail and are too busy to mess around with bugs have probably all switched back to Firefox.

Just after the launch there was an initial flurry of interest. Mark Evans commented that a number of people had checked it out with some like Walter Mossberg liking it and others like Alec Saunders suggesting it was all a shell game. Mark Evans even questioned, What Took Google So Long?

Some experts such as John Andrews even warned that ‘under the hood’ there was a Google Chrome Bait ‘n Switch. That was because of some unfortunate language in the Agreement that all users had to agree to. Google beat a hasty retreat on that one but it still left a negative impression for some.

By now, everything in the garden should be lovely. However like John Brandon, I am still left with the question as to whether this browser really has any natural customers. Clearly the power users find it lacking, yet the novices may well find its apparent simplicity somewhat baffling. I am still trying to get the Omnisearch field to accept searches with other search engines. I should be able to type ‘Yahoo cheeses‘ and get a search on Yahoo for cheeses. Perhaps the problem as PCWorld explains is that I am using Windows XP.

Type ‘google fish sticks’ to search for fish sticks on Google. The same syntax works for Yahoo, Amazon, Live Search, and other sites that are already recognized by Google or that you add. This feature, though nifty and promising, proved inconsistent in the early going: It worked for me most of the time on a Windows Vista PC, but two of my colleagues who were testing Chrome on Windows XP machines had trouble getting the feature to work.

It is all very well to have an ultra-simple browser like this, however a user manual is always obligatory. The only one I could find is the Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome. That title is an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

Post from: BPWrap

At the recent SES San Jose, Dan Heath, co-author of Made To Stick and keynote speaker, offered 6 Tips for Small Business Marketing Success. He suggested that ideas that catch on are:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

He feels that presenting users with too many choices reduces their response rate. So, avoiding “decision paralysis” is one key aspect of keeping an idea simple.

That’s what Sheena Iyengar calls ‘choice overload‘. It really is true that ‘the fewer, the better‘.

Post from: BPWrap

If you are a Firefox user and have upgraded to Firefox 3.0, then just hit that F11 key to see what he means. If you are working with a 1024 x 768 screen, then the effect is particularly good. The whole screen is taken up with the window content of the webpage you were visiting. If the page is particularly long, then you may have a scrollbar down the right-hand side. The rest is exactly what that website owner was hoping you would see. There are no toolbars along the top or a status bar along the bottom. It is all just visual content.

If you do wish to see which tabs are open, then just move your mouse to the top of the screen and the tab bar will appear. If you were working with the Navigation toolbar visible, then this toolbar will also appear at the top above the tab bar. All the other toolbars you may have had visible still remain hidden in this Full Screen view.

If you are hooked on having these bars permanently visible along the top, then Percy Cabello has some advice for you on how to Tweak Firefox 3 full screen mode. That will make the tabs and navigation toolbar a permanent visible item in your Firefox 3 Full Screen mode.

I very much prefer keeping that clean simple look. Indeed by an approach that I am about to describe, I will suggest to you how you can stay in Full Screen mode probably 95 percent of the time. I work fairly extensively on the Internet. However if I analyze my behavior on any given day, I am probably working within a very restricted list of web pages or URLs. The problem is that from a Full Screen mode webpage, I cannot access my Bookmarks Toolbar.

I raised this problem with my colleagues on the Cre8Asite Forums, in a topic which was titled Maximizing The View Window. There was a suggestion that the Bookmarks or Favorites could be put on a web page. This in turn raised the possibility that such a HTML file could be held on my local computer, which gives the most rapid and reliable access. The following image shows some of the final product. It’s a Demo version of my new computer-resident Home Page.

With what is there, I can work most of the time in the Full Screen version and rarely need to put all those toolbars back. You can download it, if you wish to check the code or modify it to create your own, from this link: Home Page Links Demo.

Some of the features you will note are the clock at the top right, a Google search field and a Quote Of The Day. Below that arranged in a table are some of the links I use for much of the day. When working for a specific client, I often add a few links that are specific to that client.

For those who are novices with HTML, it is a very simple matter to modify the code to remove or add a link. You just open the homepagelinksdemo.htm file in Notepad or something equivalent that can handle text files. The HTML code for a table entry looks like the following:
<td><a href="http://www.mysite.com/">My Site</a></td>
To change the link, put the new URL between the ” ” and add the appropriate name between the > and <.

When using such a Home Page, it really becomes very handy if you arrange that opening a new tab shows that Home Page. This can be achieved by using the New Tab Homepage 0.4 Firefox Add-on.

If you wish to select a link on this Home Page, <control>T opens up a new tab with the Home Page showing. Clicking on a link on that Home Page opens the URL in the same tab. Throughout you are working Full Screen. If you no longer want that web page, <control>W will close that tab.

I’m finding this increases my effectiveness and viewing pleasure significantly. Try your own local Home Page and perhaps you will be equally impressed. Unfortunately a similar set-up does not work so smoothly for Internet Explorer. The security features blocking ActiveX controls prevents single click opening of new web pages. Often two clicks are required to remove the blocking feature. The only sensible suggestion for Internet Explorer users is to switch to Firefox.

Post from: BPWrap

Since Google Answers is no longer active, I suggest you may wish to try out BrainBoost. At the least, it’s a very catchy name.

Post from: BPWrap

Now Google announces that it is offering a new service, Google Patent Search, in beta of course. Their Advanced Patent Search gives you some flexibility in selecting which patents should appear in your search.

Patent experts such as William Slawski, writing in a post on this in Search Engine Land, comment that the Beta label is well justified in this case since there are some bugs that need to be corrected. He points out that the results are only an undefined fraction of what is fully available, which is true. However if you are going to eat an elephant and know that it should be done ’slice by slice’, then it’s handy to be able to say just how you want your slices carved up.

If this topic is of interest to you, then check out the Cre8asite Forums discussion on this. There are some useful suggestions there.

Tags: Patent Search, Google

Post from: BPWrap

Google in its ever-ongoing journey to catalogue all knowledge in the world is well along with the printed word. You can use Google Book Search to find out where in a book you can find a particular quote. If you’re that way inclined, you can also do some detective work on some newly written book to see whether it contains other folks’ work. Of course that’s OK if it’s small sections and the author attributed it to the original author. Otherwise the author may well be liable to be pursued for copyright infringement.

It’s another example of the new transparency that we all must observe in this Internet era. Those spiders are everywhere.

Tags: Google, Book Search

Post from: BPWrap

Tip of the Hat to A.N.Onym’s thread on Intuition and Marketing in the Cre8asite Forums.

Related Links: How To Think Better

Tag: intuition, creativity

Post from: BPWrap

Perhaps that’s true or perhaps it’s another case of the intelligence trap in action.

Post from: BPWrap

Human beings are very visual creatures. An image can evoke a multitude of thoughts and sensations. We go through our lives with our window on the world. We can be moved to feel great emotions - anger, sorrow, joy, happiness, tranquillity - as different images come into our view. It’s a great world.

Associated with any image there is some associated information. This is what the technologues would call ‘meta data’. In other words, this is all the factual information about the image. It can include who made the image, how they made it, when they made it, statistics on its resolution and content. If the image contains symbols and characters, then the meta data might include a text version of the symbols and characters.

The human being turning through the pages of a National Geographic Magazine is not usually concerned with the meta data. Instead they turn over the pages and find some images that attract their attention. So they look more closely. Similarly someone walking down a city street sees people and billboards. One or the other may attract their attention. It’s the direct power of the image that exercises this attraction, not the associated meta data.

Now however the world has changed in a dramatic way for many for huge slices of their lives. They sit in front of a computer screen and see what appears on the screen. Through the Internet they see images from around the world or in their local surroundings. Surely this has become their window on the world. Isn’t this just an enhanced ability to see images?

Well, yes and no … The computer is not just like a glorified camera you hold up to your eye. In the street, you catch a glimpse of an attractive member of the opposite sex. So your attention is drawn to that image and perhaps you turn your head to get a better look.

If you think the computer is doing something very similar, then you are missing an important distinction. In order for you to see an image, you currently have to type in some words to “tell the computer” where to go. In technical terms, you are trying to specify the ‘meta data’ to define what you want to see. You’re forced to do that because the computer only understands meta data. For every image “out there”, there is associated meta data. So the computer tries to match the meta data for what you want to see with the meta data for all the images out there. If there’s a match, the computer brings up the image and you see what you were looking for. I would like to see an image of Paris Hilton in 2003. Suddenly one appears on the screen. So what was complicated about that?

Well that ‘matching meta data’ is a horrendous computing task. In fact for most meta data, the problem is that there are almost an infinity of images out there whose meta data could ‘match’ the meta data in my request. The computer will have used some incredibly powerful computing facilities to be able to produce an image that may match what I’m looking for. I will not be aware exactly what has been done. Perhaps I put my request into a Google search field on a toolbar on my computer. What exactly is done with those search terms, how they may be weighted … someone else determines all that.

So here is the fundamental change. Before I pointed my camera at something I was interested in and soaked up the image. I knew what I was looking at.

Now I must try to specify what I want to look at in words (’meta data’) and some unknown process points me at a matching image. Whether I see the best image that would fit my needs is unknown to me. Someone else is now pointing me in the “right direction”. Of course, I’m winning because I have the potential to see an image from a very much larger collection of images. At the same time, I may be losing because someone else may have influenced the process so that I see an image they would like me to see, rather than one I might prefer.

Post from: BPWrap

I’ve used the technique they recommend many times and it really works. It’s very good for getting into tough questions of company strategy. Particularly if you have a domineering boss and his somewhat hesitant team, this technique allows ideas to surface without anyone having to be seen as a trouble-maker. Often the front-line troops meeting the customers face-to-face know much more of the realities of the company’s successes or failures than the top brass on the 42nd Floor of the Head Office.

The reason for my amusement is the name this US-based group used: the KJ-Technique. They explain the name by stating that it was named for its inventor, Jiro Kawakita. Apparently in Japanese, it is usual to put the last name initial first.

Why amusing? Well I’ve been using it for years and calling it the Crawford Slip technique. I believe Crawford was a Professor in California in the 1920’s. Here is a link to give you more information on the Crawford Slip. As they say, a prophet is not honoured in his own country. It sounds as though Jiro Kawakita is doing for the USA what Deming did in the reverse direction for the Japanese with Quality in 1950. In fact, the KJ / Crawford Slip technique can have even more profound effects on the success of a company than all that Deming did, even though Quality is very important.

Post from: BPWrap

This idea has been around for at least 750 years. It’s known as Occam’s Razor. If you haven’t heard of it, here’s a definition that Google has.
Definition of Occam’s Razor on the Web:
Originally propounded by the English philospher, William of Occam (1300-1349), as: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. Which is translated: Entities should not be multiplied more than necessary. In other words, the simplest explanation is the one that is most likely to be correct, or KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) Occam’s Razor is often mentioned in Robert Heinlein’s works.
www.technomom.com/harassed/definitions.shtml
In other words, try very hard to cut it down to only two choices.

This idea can be further extended into a little two way table that looks like this:

In other words, you show the upsides and the downsides of each of the two choices. It’s surprising this simple approach isn’t used more. It’s a very powerful aid to taking a decision.

It has been suggested in a number of different contexts. One I like is called the Johari Window. If you would like to know more check out Windows - 3 for outstanding performance.

Post from: BPWrap

Any website is complex and different people will see different aspects as being important. It’s almost like those 6 blind men touching different parts of the elephant and trying to describe what they’re feeling. (It’s a tree trunk. It’s a wall. It’s a hose. etc.) My mental picture of this assembly is of 12 blind men. 6 of them are around a huge African elephant and trying to explain to the others what they perceive. The other 6 are grouped around a sleek antelope and trying to explain what they perceive. Clearly the confusion may be even greater than if a website was always the same entity.

A natural question then becomes, “What can either group of 6 blind men learn from the other group?” To use a technical term, what are the scaleable features that apply to both. Scaleable is defined as follows, “A scaleable system is capable of growing through additions of modular increments, without necessitating major modification to the original system.”

My own view is that one of the most important scaleable features is one that the antelope group will more easily recognize than the elephant group. This was illustrated by a fascinating question and response that was raised about an IBM website.

The most scaleable feature for me is created by something that is both a strength and a weakness of the Internet. This is the hyperlink. It is so easy to create another web page and give a hyperlink to that web page from your starting web page. Not surprisingly, if a website is being constructed by a committee the easiest resolution of a conflict is to add more hyperlinks so that everyone is somewhat satisfied.

The discussion at one Search Engine Optimization session at the IMC 2004 got on to why IBM has a problem getting good SE rankings for some of its desired keywords. You can illustrate this by a search for - notebook computers. I’ve just done a Google search and the first IBM page that comes up for Thinkpad is #75. An IBM representative acknowledged they had a problem in coordinating the efforts of different work groups working on different web pages. They had realized this and were now working on methods to overcome this problem.

So what is the most scaleable feature? My vote goes for, “Focus, focus, focus”. What is the competitive advantage you’re offering to your potential customer in your target niche? The antelope group relates to this almost instinctively. The elephant group may only see it when they run into problems caused by their lack of focus.

Post from: BPWrap

I did a little Google work and suggested that BWMap was already used somewhat. Better by far to try to find a unique name. So the BrainWareMap was born. So here’s a Creative Learning resource, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Post from: BPWrap

“Helicopter Vision” is a term that I always heard was coined in Shell Oil many years back. It describes the ability to view from on high some situation and see in sharp outline the right “big picture”. From IMC 2004, there were three “thoughts” that came to me like that, which I will describe in upcoming items. The 4th item I will add thereafter is just a striking phrase that one speaker said that got me thinking.

Helicopter Vision is a very useful skill. An analogy I use for the same thing is the way an eagle flies high with extremely keen vision to spot what is really going on at ground level. It’s all part of better thinking processes. Those interested can read more in one of my papers on How To Think Better.

Post from: BPWrap