Silicon Valley Musings

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

This is funny.

from Dove’s Campaign for Beauty.

Original here.

If you are not using Webkinz as your social network, you are old. Old enough to drive that is.

According to Techcrunch, Google has announced their fastest growing search terms. Number two is Webkinz.

Ganz  sells cute little beanie baby-like stuff animals that come with an id code that unlocks an online  virtual world for your Webkinz that is also a social network for kids. Watch out MySpace. Watch out Facebook. Here comes Webkinz.

Pure Evil

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Intel Corporation’s new 45nm Penryn microprocessor relies the element Hafnium and metal gate technology to increase performance and significantly reduce eco-unfriendly, wasteful electricity leaks.

In recognition of the 45nm technology (but also for the innovation that will allow Intel to continue doubling, and doubling and doubling every two years), Penryn has already joined Apple’s iPhone and other game-changing gadgets as a member of the elite group of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year, and just today, Dean Takahashi said, “Intel is about to hit one out of the park.”

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an independent international medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters, or exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries.

I have been thinking about Dr. BJ Fogg’s recent video entitled “Elements of Simplicity.” I have been thinking about capital and tunneling and how they make Web-based products and services simpler.

I would suggest expanding the resource Money to Capital. This would allow other forms of capital to be considered when developing simple products and services. Other forms of capital could include:

• social capital - favors, markers, recommendations, reviews
• political capital – endorsements, votes
• award systems - frequent flier miles

Expanding on Dr. Fogg’s traveling to Ohio example, walking to Ohio is difficult. Asking a friend to drive me would be simpler, but would cost one a fair amount of social capital.

Dr. Fogg’s framework can be used to explain benefit of the Web design strategy known as tunneling, the persuasive tool of leading users through a predetermined sequence of actions or events, step by step. Some tasks are inherently complex. Tunneling divides a complex task into steps that reach the threshold of simplicity by reducing the use of a critical resource (typically time or brain cycles) to a reasonable level.

For example, walking to Ohio would be simpler (for some even enjoyable) if it was divided into a set of day hikes where accommodations are prearranged for each evening. One of the best examples of employing tunneling to make a complex task simple is Intuit’s TurboTax.

Many Web-based products or services would benefit from evaluating Dr. Fogg’s simplicity framework, and providing different tunneling opportunities optimized for different resources: time, capital, brain cycles.

From http://www.sigchi.org/dis2008/

DIS 2008 will be hosted in Cape Town, South Africa from Monday 25 February – Wednesday 27 February 2008. It will be the first DIS conference to be held outside the USA or Europe, and as such aims to challenge participants to reflect on designing interactive systems for users outside these established markets. This is especially relevant as these markets are fast becoming more lucrative and influential.