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”Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors… Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory
Andrew Carnegie
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Yamaha Recalling Pianos
Yamaha has recalled 20,000 pianos due to a problem with the pedal sticking, causing pianists to play faster than they normally would, resulting in a dangerous number of accidentals.
The sticky pedal also makes it harder for pianists to come to a full stop at the end of a piece, making it extremely risky for audiences.
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Appreciating and Perceiving Beauty
A man played six Bach pieces on a violin for 45 minutes in the Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning. During the time he played, approximately two thousand people passed through the station. Of those, only six people stopped and listened, and then only for a very short while. The greatest levels of enthusiasm were displayed by young children, several of whom tugged on their parents, asking to stop and listen, but without success.
This concert, enjoyed by virtually none of the two thousand in the station that day, was given by the renowned violinist Joshua Bell, playing some of the most intricate pieces ever written. Two days before his concert in a theater in Boston had sold out with ticket prices averaging $100. [This] challenges us to ponder what we each are missing. In a common place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?
[Summarized from the Harvard Business Review]
I found a clip from the event on YouTube:
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The Microsofting of Apple
This guy doesn’t get it. If Apple is gaining market share, it’s because the experience people have with their products surpasses the products of others.
Take the iPad, which instantly shed the moniker “Jesus tablet” once it saw the light of day. It’s a blown-up iPod Touch, rolled out not to be insanely great but to give Apple an entry in the netbook derby.
Apple is in the business of creating great user experiences. Their strategy is to make casual computing more comfortable. It’s not about the hardware or the software. It’s about the experience you have with their product.
The iPad looks like a device optimized to patronize the iTunes store.
Totally right. Apple is in business to sell products. What’s wrong with that?
Apple refuses to support Flash, which delivers 75% of the video on the Web. […] Flash would also allow iPhone and iPad users to consume video and other entertainment without going through iTunes. Flash would let users freely obtain the kinds of features they can only get now at the Apple App Store.
With a modern browser, like Safari, this isn’t true. HTML5 in Safari natively supports video without flash. It’s a far more flexible, and accessible way of delivering video.
And what about Apple’s decision to exclude Flash? Apple and its supporters stake out aesthetic and philosophical grounds: Flash is buggy. Flash is a power hog. Flash is “proprietary” (horrors). Flash is used to create those annoying Web ads
The leading cause of browser crashes are caused by memory leaks in plugins. We know what plugin they are talking about.
While I only commented on a few key pieces of the article, I fail to see the connection to Microsoft.
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Sunflower Solutions of Cleveland brings low-cost power to Africa
A very nice article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about a startup company I’m proud to be affiliated with.
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A simple rule that made me lose 5 pounds in a month
I vowed to start taking better care of my health last November. I’m not obese, fat, portly, flabby, or gross by any stretch of the imagination, but I wasn’t living a lifestyle that made me feel healthy.
I started a real exercise regimen in December, but prior to that I made a simple dietary rule for myself. This rule on its own was responsible for my losing 5lbs in a month. It’s not super impressive, but it was a health change that I made without altering my lifestyle or my busy schedule.
The rule: When you are thirsty drink water, and only drink something else when you aren’t thirsty.
It’s that simple. When you crave a soda, have one. But, don’t have one just because you are thirsty.
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