Oddity

Here’s a robot that was designed to mimic the subtle and intricate movements of the human face and lips.

Full article here.

Impressive strides in animatronic devices, but still creepy in my book.

(via SvN)

Here’s an interesting snippet from Malcom Gladwell’s upcoming book Outliers: The Story of Success:

This idea — that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice — surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

I’ve also read that number about three years ago in one of my issues of Scientific American, and I suppose that study – as well as many others – has helped the research community settle on the figure.

(via DF)

If you remember the smash video from A Ha’s Take On Me from the 80s, here’s the literal version where the lyrics refer to what’s actually happening in the video.

I see this as a huge internet meme starting in 3…2…1.

Along similar lines: Here’s the Family Guy version of the same video.

Every Friday from here on out I’m going to delve into something more conversational simply because I want to.  This Friday, here and now, is all about a productivity tip from Merlin Mann over at 43folders that I find very valuable, simply because I have a zillion things on my plate and keeping sight of what each of them is really driving to sometimes gets difficult.

Mann basically says to take what we’re thinking about doing, and re-phrase it into a more actionable what and why format:

Think about the thing that’s most on your mind right now. It’s probably not the thing you think is most on your mind; the stuff that’s really getting our attention likes to run behind the refrigerator whenever we turn the lights on. But, anyway. Got it? Okay.

Let’s say you now have in your mind something that needs to be different than how it currently is. For me it’s:

Slides for talk in Arizona

If I re-articulate that in the following format:

I need to $FOO because I want to $BAR

I get something like this:

I need to spend an hour cleaning up my Keynote slides because I want to give a great talk on Inbox Zero next Friday.

Now I’ve said something I can use; I have a Next Action (reviewing and editing my slides for 60 minutes) and a Project (presenting a kickass talk in Scottsdale).

This is Outcome-Based Thinking 101, but I think it can be a powerful way to focus when you’re feeling adrift about what to do with a something.

Give it a try, forcing yourself to sketch more than the shadows of anxiety, priority, or resignation. Envision what this would look like if you really kicked ass, then figure out the next physical action that gets your kicking foot into motion.

Try it.  It seriously cuts away the stuff you’d normally do when diving into a task and helps you get right to the heart of the matter.

Happy weekend.

Eppendorf develops products and systems for use in life-science laboratories worldwide.  By any measure, you’d think this is not the sort of company that would have serious marketing chops.

But you’d be wrong.

For its latest product, Eppendorf spent significant money on a viral video that is doing exactly what it was designed to do — make its rounds via word-of-mouth and the social web.  It’s linked everywhere right now, and this post just adds one more node to the pile.

Here you have a company that sells and messages to a scientific community Purple Cowing something so remarkably well that it’s a perfect illustration of how you can really get a product/company/service name to spread.  It’s cheesy and campy, and that’s what people love about it.  No brochure, web page, or whitepaper could ever cast such a wide net.

I don’t know what epMotion is, but that’s not really the point.  The name is out there en masse.

Just because you work in what’s perceived to be a dry or conservative industry doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun.

TED has a very good talk by Tony Robbins about what shapes our behavior, what drives us to do what we do, and what fulfillment is all about.  Very much worth 20 mins of your life.

Three-and-a-half years ago, when we started MiPro Consulting, one of the first things we did was define a set of core values. Before our name, before our logo, before even our mission statement, we defined a set of values that would serve as a guide, or compass, for where we took MiPro Consulting. Over the past few months we have been highlighting a core values in our employee news letter. In March I wrote about our first core value, PEOPLE. In the spirit of getting to know MiPro, I now share it with you.

People. Our first core value. Sometimes I am asked why our second core value Customers isn’t our first. I love that question!

When we started MiPro Consulting we spent a lot of time discussing not only what we were going to do but why were going to do it. The most consistent theme in those early days was to build a work place that was fun, passionate, and engaging. We knew that to be successful we needed to create and maintain a work environment that attracted the very best and the very brightest in the industry. (By the way, when I look at the team we have, it is clear to me that the formula is working!).

In professional services your product is your people. If you don’t have great people then you really don’t have much value that you can offer to your customer. So that is why People come first at MiPro.

Our recipe is pretty simple.

1. Create a GREAT work environment.
2. Use that environment to attract GREAT people.
3. Encourage your GREAT people to do GREAT things for their customers.
4. Doing GREAT things for customers yields more business.
5. Repeat step one over and over and over.
6. Never forget step one.

These are my thoughts on MiPro core value number one — PEOPLE. I would love to hear your thoughts.

-Chris Bishop
President, MiPro Consulting

It’s Friday and there’s no better time to look at real examples of management speak gone awry.  BBC News has a list of 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate, and some of the better ones score a seriously impressive nonsense/ridiculous rating.  See them after the jump.

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LA’s Ivanhoe Reservoir contains millions of gallons of drinking water for LA residents.  In the summer, however, problem presents itself: the water can potentially become contaminated with bromate (depending on daily outbound flow rates, one would presume), which is a natural reaction between solar light, chlorine (a treatment chemical) and naturally-occurring bromide.

Seeing how chlorine is a necessary treatment additive and the bromide is a natural element within the water, Ivanhoe officials got creative and decided to keep sunlight away from the water by dropping over 3 million black spheres (called bird balls) into the reservoir.  This effectively created an opaque layer atop the water that serves as a solar shield.  Problem solved.  Creative, yes?

Check out a video of the action here.

But allow me to think out loud for a second: Ivanhoe is preventing the formation of a carcinogen by interrupting the photochemical reaction that forms bromate, the threat in question.  But is anyone thinking about the potential toxicity of millions of plastic balls leaching into the drinking water supply, especially millions of black balls that take the beating of the LA sun all summer?  To me, this seems like you could be trading one problem for another.

A bunch more photos at Curbed.

(via SVN)