Open up your mind and say, ahh...

This New App Essay Requires Your Attention To Read

The internet is a pretty interesting place, but as we become more and more absorbed in it, it’s also a place that can change how we interact with others, and how much attention we give the world around us.

A new app by writer Robin Sloan attempts to — in a way — break through our now limited attention spans, by requiring your focused attention to get its message.

“I’m a huge fan of the web — I basically live in my browser, with 26 tabs open at any given time — but I’ve become more and more conscious of the price we’re paying in terms of attention and focus.” Sloan told Mashable. “So I wanted to write about that, and also make something that ‘fought back’ against those pressures and sort of insisted on a certain kind of attention.”

Called Fish, Sloan’s app is an interactive essay that require you to tap the screen to read through it. Sloan worked out some of the basic ideas for the essay in a text editor, but then created the app and the essay side-by-side. Each page of the app essay contains just a sentence or a few words, and tapping on the screen advances you along.

“Everything we experience on the web, we experience inside a tab, inside a browser, on a laptop screen, surrounded by a dozen other things. So what happens? You flit from Facebook to Twitter, you click a lot of links, they all line up next to each other, you give up on a few and get absorbed in some others…ad infinitum,” says Sloan. “Slowly you close the tabs you’re done with and the ones you know you’ll never get to, and you never go back. All in all, I don’t think that’s a very fulfilling way to read or watch anything, especially considering the caliber of stuff that’s out there available to us today.”

The entire essay takes about 15 minutes to read in total, the equivalent of a short commute or lunch break. Various pages in the app have a built-in tweet button where you can share particularly memorable lines from the essay with friends on Twitter.

On the last page of the essay, Sloan also gives readers the opportunity to contact him directly on Twitter with thoughts on the essay. “In those tweets, people tend to say ‘thanks,’ and to say that they’ve been feeling some of the same things themselves. It’s nice to get that sense of shared recognition—for reader and writer alike,” says Sloan. “Text is, it turns out, still a pretty powerful technology.”

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

Fisker to Replace Battery Packs on Nearly All Karma Sedans

Fisker and its high-voltage battery supplier, A123 Systems, have identified a fault in the battery packs fitted to the Karma sedan and are beginning an initiative to replace all affected vehicles in the coming weeks.

The issue involves a manufacturing defect in some of the prismatic cells produced by A123 Systems at its Livonia, Michigan facility, which could result in “battery underperformance and decreased durability.” Fisker believes this is the same issue that affected the Consumer Reports Karma and was discovered by Fisker’s “Quality SWAT Team.”

Around 640 Karmas are likely affected, although Fisker has only seen the issue manifested in a “handful” of its vehicles. Roger Ormisher, Fisker’s director of global communications, tells Wired that as soon as A123 Systems can produce the fault-free packs, “we will install them as quickly as possible.” Naturally, the replacements — which A123 says will cost the battery supplier approximately $55 million — will be free of charge to existing Karma owners.

Fisker is also extending the warranty of current Karmas from 50 months/50,000 miles to 60 months/60,000 miles in North America, with European Karmas getting a warrant extension from 48 months/100,000 km to 60 months/100,000 km.

Fisker will begin alerting affected owners in the coming days, and also plans a vehicle software update to improve all aspects of the Karma — from powertrain to infotainment — later this week.

Via Wired Autopia: http://www.wired.com/autopia/

Seattle’s Monorail Is Feted, While Sydney’s Meets Its Fate

This weekend, in separate hemispheres, two of the most famous urban monorail systems outside of Disney World were the focus of celebrations. In Seattle, a beloved urban transit system met a milestone anniversary, while residents of Sydney were glad to learn that their single-track boondoggle would soon be dismantled.

We’ll start off in Seattle, where the Seattle Center Monorail celebrated its 50th anniversary. The system hasn’t changed much since it opened for the 1962 World’s Fair: the same two German-built Alweg trains are running on the same 1.2 miles of parallel electrified tracks. Even an Elvis impersonator joined in the celebrations, reprising the King’s famous ride.

Despite a few high-profile accidents in the past decade and a few failures to extend the line, public support for the monorail seems strong. According to the Seattle Times, Seattleites showed their pride in the system over the weekend, joining in festivities and bringing their monorail memorabilia to stations in exchange for free rides. A middle school student even made a retro-looking video game that reenacts a journey on the monorail.

In Sydney, however, it’s a completely different story. The 2.2 mile Metro Monorail was never popular, and now it’s being torn down as soon as 2014. Looking at the project’s history and ridership statistics, it’s easy to see why: A light-rail link would’ve been cheaper to build and serve more people, but Lyle Lanley faked an Aussie accent and sold the local government on the idea back in the 1980s.

Today, the elevated track interrupts the urban landscape with a route that’s barely even useful for tourists, let alone locals. It’s also expensive: a 500 foot ride between two stops costs more than $5.

Last week, with almost unanimous support from civic, community and business leaders, the New South Wales government announced that they’d purchased the Metro Monorail with the intent of tearing it down and replacing it with light rail links. Indeed, one of the main drawbacks to a monorail is its inability to tie in with existing rail networks.

Despite the Sydney setback, and the end of the “monorail mania” that saw worldwide interest in the technology from the ’60s through the ’80s, some urban planners still have a one-track mind — especially in dense environments where a monorail can be built above existing infrastructure.

Even outside of theme parks and airports, monorails still ply the skies across Asia and the Middle East, and they’re especially popular in China and Japan. A new line in Saudi Arabia even ferries pilgrims to and from Mecca, and several systems are under construction in India’s major cities.

Photo: Flickr/imeljac

Via Wired Autopia: http://www.wired.com/autopia/

The Opportunity for Business

I read a phrase in some article (I forget where) that said that sharing (social sharing) is something that brings a measurable uptick in the opportunity for business. As people are often scrambling to understand the “ROI” of using social networks and social media, that might well make for a decent start to the conceptual math required to talk about it.

A “share” is the opportunity for business.

With Great Sharing

Think about this, though. If someone pluses or likes or retweets or otherwise shares your information or ideas via some social channel, there’s quite a lot more that has to happen to make that sharing function a true “opportunity for business.” If you subscribe to some tweet network that employs robots to retweet your information, do you really believe that the 100 or 1000 or 100000 retweets you’ve bought will translate to a trustworthy passing forward of that information?

Further, even if the information you share is passed on by a trustworthy source, when the next people to receive that sharing signal visit that information and find it to be a pure advertisement of your business, do you think that will compel the secondary source? Thus, perhaps that share is wasted, as well.

The Appearance of Activity and Busy-ness

A lot of what we do in social networks certainly seems busy and active. We tweet. We share. We pass on articles (sometimes because we’ve been asked/begged/pleaded with to share them). We skim a lot. We glance over a post or concept and pass it on without adding much except for that valuable pass-through.

Agencies and other organizations quite often pat their clients on the back and say, “Wow! Look at that! Your article got 1000 retweets and 2900 likes!” The company owner then smiles politely back and asks, “And that gives me….”

We can surely look very busy, doing all this social media work. But that’s not the real work.

The real work is earning a valuable share from a trusted resource to a network of thoughtful and potentially like-minded individuals.

Seek those opportunities for business, and not the blind retweets and busy-ness that can otherwise glitter just as brightly.

Chris Brogan is an eleven year veteran of social media using both web and mobile technologies to build digital relationships for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Why Do Magazines Look So Terrible on the iPad 3?

The complaints were first brought to light by Tumblr blogger Jamie Billett. He pointed out that in the New Yorker‘s iPad app, the text on some pages is rendered as HTML, and the text on other pages is rendered as an image (.png) file. The latter pages now appear “badly aliased” — i.e. conspicuously pixelated — throughout the app because the images haven’t been formatted to accommodate the iPad 3′s 2048 x 1536-pixel resolution, he complains. (The iPad 2, by comparison, has a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.)

The New Yorker and other Conde Nast title have taken the heat for looking poor under the new display, but they’re not alone. Titles from other magazine publishers — we looked at Time magazine and Sports Illustrated from Time Inc., and at Esquire and O: The Oprah Magazine from Hearst — all suffered from the same problems.

The only exception? Vogue, which launched its iPad edition the same day the iPad 3 hit stores. The title planned its debut in conjunction with the tablet’s release, and thus was able to optimize for the iPad’s “retina display” ahead of time, a Conde Nast spokesperson told us. The spokesperson added that the company is “working to optimize the rest of our digital edition portfolio over the next few weeks.”

The New Yorker‘s text appears pixelated on the iPad 3 (viewed at 100%).

 

But what will the ‘optimization’ process entail? How much will it increase file sizes? (We noticed, for instance, that Vogue‘s premiere issue was a full 408 megabytes on the iPad 3, and less than 300 on the iPad 2.) We spoke with Zeke Koch, senior director of product management of Adobe’s digital publishing arm, to find out. Adobe’s software powers all of Conde Nast’s editions for tablets.

Magazine publishers who use Adobe’s software all begin with InDesign to develop layouts, Koch explained. Those layouts can then be exported in three different kinds of formats: as images (.png or .jpg), PDF or HTML. Different kinds of files — images, for instance, or video and audio files — are embedded within those larger file types.

Since magazines began publishing on tablets, “virtually all” publishers have chosen to export their digital editions as PNG (.png) files, Koch said. “The primary reason they did that is because the fidelity is perfect. What you see on the desktop when you’re designing is exactly what you see on the iPad when you’re finished. Images are the fastest thing to load, and if you’re trying to create a quick, effortless browsing experience, images are the way to do that,” he explained.

“That was okay when there was only one screen size — when you were just working with the iPad 1 and 2,” he added. “When the iPad 3 came out, you were now dealing with a device with four times as many pixels.” The iPad 3 applies an anti-aliasing filter to all low-resolution content, which blurs images ever so slightly. As a result, photographs still look about the same iPad 3, but the text looks a lot worse — i.e., visibly blurry, or pixelated.

What Vogue did — and what all other titles will have to do in the coming weeks — is begin exporting their digital editions as PDFs, said Koch.

But what about file size? I pointed out to Koch that Vogue was nearly as large as Wired‘s first issue for the original iPad. Unfortunately, he said, magazine files will be larger for iPad 3 readers because the image and video files need to be delivered at a higher resolution. Owners of first and second-generation iPads will still be able to download smaller, lower-resolution files, however. A magazine that is around 400 megabytes on the iPad 3 will be around 280 megabytes on the iPad 1 and 2, Koch said.

But why not render in HTML? I asked Koch. Wouldn’t that make the files smaller, and give readers the added benefit of selectable text?

Koch claimed that publishing in HTML wouldn’t substantially reduce the file sizes. “In both cases, you have a bunch of words, and descriptions of where things should be, and multimedia. Those multimedia files are still the same size.” He said the big disadvantage with HTML is that it’s “not very good at layout out things predictably and perfectly.” Rather, it’s optimal for helping people create content that will adapt to any size screen.

Ultimately, however, Koch believes most publishers will move to HTML as standards improve and as publishers move to publish on a wider range of tablets.

So there you have it. Magazine readers need not despair about the appearances of their magazines for too much longer, as publishers are working to optimize their editions. The fix is relatively simple: publishers will have to increase the resolution of their image and video files, and export their digital editions as PDFs. iPad 3 owners will have to suffer longer download times, and won’t be able to store as many magazines on their devices as iPad 1 and 2 owners, but that’s the price one pays for a visually stunning reading experience, no?

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

For Love or Money: Does Online Dating Really Work? INFOGRAPHIC

Online dating is booming. The industry has doubled since 2007, currently boasting 40 million users and $1.9 billion in annual revenue, according Match.com.

But does online dating really work for the lovelorn? Or does it just help companies rake in heaps of cash?

Some 17% of married couples say they met online, compared to 27% who say they met through a mutual friend and 38% who say they met at work or school. People who meet on dating sites are also quicker to tie the knot than those who meet in the real world — dating for an average of just over 18 months before getting hitched, compared to 42 months for those who meet offline.

But be skeptical when browsing potential love interests; 81% of people online lie about their height, weight or age on dating profiles. Women typically trim about 8 pounds from their weight, while men typically add half an inch to their height.

The infographic below paints a fuller picture of just what the online dating landscape looks like and who its big winners are. MBAPrograms.org pulled research and reporting from a variety of sources to put the pieces together. Check it out and see if it matches your own experiences and assumptions.

Do you think online dating really works? Let us know in the comments.

Courtesy of: MBA Programs

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

Internet-Based Theater Company Lives Between Cyberspace and the Stage

A small Philadelphia-based company called New Paradise Laboratories is re-creating theater for the connected generation. It’s incorporating social networks like Facebook, Skype and Chatroulette into the production and presentation of shows, pulling theater into the virtual space.

This innovative experience takes audiences through a rabbit hole on a visually stimulating online adventure. Stories evolve on social networks with multimedia components from YouTube and Sound Cloud. It can be hard to decipher what’s real and what’s fiction.

Before shows open on stage, the audience gets to interact with characters on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts. The theater company works with actors to develop the fictional characters on social media accounts.

“A few years ago, we realized there was a whole audience of people that weren’t really participating in theater but they really heavily influenced by the Internet. They grew up online,” said Katy Otto, NPL’s activity coordinator. “NPL had a lot of interest in making theater that would appeal to these people.”

For the production Fatebook, the company’s theater experience begins on social media. The cast list is available online and shows all the character’s online accounts.

“In ‘Fatebook’ it was a cast of characters that built identities on Facebook but with a different account — they would create an identity,” Otto said. “To start the performance you would follow a cast of characters and their interactions with each other. That culminated in a performance where they all met at a party and got to see how different people evolved.”

The 1996-founded theater company worked to bring Broadway home to the Internet, where interactive performances may thrive. Fatebook was one of the first plays of its kind.

“I feel like it’s like a medium where stories can be told in a whole bunch of ways,” NPL’s artistic director Whit MacLaughlin told Mashable. “I wanted to find out how you use translate theater into an online space. You have to figure out the narration of social media — how to convey something about a person.”

Extremely Public Displays of Privacy is the newest experience presented by NPL. The play’s three acts are available online. Act one consists of videos of the two main female protagonists meeting online for the first time on Chatroulette.

Actress Annie Enneking played Fess Elliot in the production. Enneking created Elliot’s online persona for close to a year, taking pictures, writing songs and updating her Facebook 24/7 as her fictional character.

“I felt very vulnerable to do it,” Enneking said. “I was creating the character online for nine months. Suddenly the day the play went up, we had to go through back in time and publish posts given the timeline of the life of production.”

Separating herself from “being Fess” was difficult when the play was over.

“What I loved the most was that I had a constant outlet for my creativity. I would follow my impulses. I was creating little pieces for my character,” she said. “After the show closed, it felt like a little death.”

In addition to molding the two characters’ lives online, the play also incorporated geo-location technology where a character guides you through a park. Audience members could download a sound file for a 45-minute guided tour in a Philadelphia park. Online audiences can take a virtual walk online via YouTube. The third act completed the play with a real-time performance in Philadelphia where the theater is based.

NPL is currently working on its next interactive play called ’27′ — based around the idea that the lives of creative individuals such as Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain end around this time. The production will debut next fall.

What do you think about the intersection of theatre with the virtual world? Tell us in the comments.

Images courtesy of New Paradise Laboratories

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com

How to Leverage Your Personality Type to Nail the Interview

Mona Abdel-Halim is the co-founder of Resunate, the makers of the Apply widget for startups. You can start attracting top talent for free by getting an Apply widget for your company at Resunate.com/employers. Connect with Resunate on Facebook and Twitter.

With the competition in today’s job market, you’re considered lucky if you are offered an interview.

But once you’ve made it to the interview round, there’s more to consider than just dressing the part and ensuring you remember to bring extra copies of your resume. To really nail the interview — and ultimately, get the job — you need to demonstrate to the employer why you’re the best person for the job. This can be difficult for many job seekers to do.

One way to showcase your talents is through knowing and understanding your personality type. This knowledge enables you to position your natural personality preferences as job strengths and indicators of success.

You may have taken personality assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument before. This is a psychometric tool taken by more than 2 million people annually that sorts your natural preferences, referred by four abbreviated letters. They include:

• Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

There are sixteen possible Myers-Briggs® personality types that help to illuminate your natural preferences. Knowing your personality type can help you understand the type of workplace culture where you’d be most comfortable. This can serve as a guide for the direction you should take in your career in order to be the most successful — and satisfied — on the job.

---

Personality Type & Your Interview Performance

---

Depending on your personality type and the position at hand, you can emphasize your strengths and learn how those preferences could help you at this particular organization.

For instance, if you have a preference for thinking and you’re vying for a high pressure position with a lot of decision-making, you should communicate your ability to think logically, conduct an objective analysis and consider the impacts and consequences to arrive at the best solution.

No personality type is an indicator that you won’t succeed; rather, your type indicates how naturally things come to you and how much you may be within your comfort range.

According to The Myers & Briggs Foundation, “Work environments influence how comfortable you are at your job. Someone with a preference for Introversion, for example, who is required to do a lot of detail work or think through a problem, may find it disruptive to be in an environment that is too loud or where a lot of interaction is required. When you know this about yourself, you can make arrangements to do your work in a more suitable location or at a time when there is less activity and interference.”

---

Personality Type & The Interviewer’s Perception of You

---

When it comes to communication with your interviewer, self-awareness is another vital aspect of a successful interview.

Let’s say your preference indicates extraversion, which means you are energized by interacting with people and develop ideas by discussing them with others. You might not have a problem talking about yourself, but you may end up saying things before you’ve had a chance to think them through. Once you know and understand your personality type, you can pay attention to your potential blind spots (such as responding quickly, sometimes without thinking) during the interview and ensure that you’re presenting your best, most professional self. This can also help with the elusive “likeability” factor that many hiring managers and recruiters ultimately look for in a job candidate.

Haven’t discovered your personality type yet? While you may think you know your preferences, taking a personality assessment can help you become more aware of how you prefer to work and how you’ll get along with others, which is not only valuable during a job interview but also for your career in general.

Employers will be impressed if you know and understand your personality type. It indicates to them that you are aware of yourself and, thus, more easily retained at the job. It also provides much-needed insight on yourself to highlight your strengths and explain why you’re the best person for the job. Not only is it a great way to position yourself for career advancement, but it can help you discover how to work better with co-workers and management, knowing their preferences and how they align with yours. This can ensure that if you land the job you don’t become one of the many in the workforce gainfully employed but dissatisfied with their job.

Do you know your personality type? How has it played a role in your career or job search?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, gehringj, AlexRaths.

Via Mashable: http://www.mashable.com