Will North American cel phone users start to behave like other countries or will bandwidth, pricing, regulation and equipment strangle the mobile economy?

Stephen

50 Little Things You Can Do to Empower Other People

1. Give out compliments that you mean.
2. Speak and act with honesty.
3. Listen to others.
4. Help illustrate your points with visual aids.
5. Teach a class.
6. Get involved in community art projects.
7. Mentor a child or student.
8. Volunteer with local organizations.
9. Lead a group on a travel expedition
10. Donate money to charity.
11. Help the spread of community health clinics.
12. Take the time to talk to strangers.
13. Start a non-profit.
14. Travel abroad and make new friends.
15. Reach out to friends and relatives at a distance
16. Be aware of body language.
17. Be sincere.
18. Nurture talent in others.
19. Go out and support local musicians.
20. Give thoughtful gifts.
21. Join a community farm or grocery coop.
22. Volunteer in schools.
23. Stay in touch with local politics.
24. Throw dinner parties with a mixed range of guests.
25. Smile more often.
26. Use public transportation.
27. Organize recycling projects.
28. Run a benefit event.
29. Project positivity and eliminate negative thoughts.
30. Join a book group or club.
31. Start or join a language exchange program.
32. Lead team-building exercises at work.
33. Encourage social activities.
34. Initiate physical contact.
35. Tell your loved ones how you feel about them.
36. Make sure the atmosphere at work is a democratic one.
37. Nod your head when someone is making a point.
38. Help foster creativity.
39. Run meetings with an open, discussion oriented atmosphere.
40. Have suggestions ready for those who need advice.
41. Take walks to new areas of town.
42. Spend time planting trees in the community.
43. Set up a food or blanket drive.
44. Learn inspiring quotes that can be doled out.
45. Learn new listening techniques.
46. Study psychology.
47. Give a helping hand.
48. Give encouragement instead of criticism.
49. Take time for yourself to help others.
50. Learn intervention techniques.

Read the whole post.

Let’s be careful out there.

Stephen

Here are Two Questions That Can Change Your Life From Daniel Pink:

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

What’s the first sentence? In one sentence state what lasting impression you want to leave on the world?.
And for day to day motivation – Was I better today than yesterday?

They’re good questions and helped me many times to get through challenges.

Stephen

That Whole Internet Thing’s Not Going To Work Out
How to suss out bad tech predictions.
By Farhad Manjoo
Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Remember Clifford Stoll and Silicon Snake Oil: “In 1995, Clifford Stoll, an astronomer, author, and mad-scientist type, published a column in Newsweek with a doozy of a headline: “The Internet? Bah!” The piece was based on Stoll’s book, Silicon Snake Oil, in which he argued that we were all being taken for a ride by tech pundits who offered dreamy visions of a coming “information superhighway.” “Baloney,” Stoll wrote. “The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”"

The learnings from Manjoo:

Manjoo lays out four principles for more successful predictions about our digital future:

1. Good predictions are based on current trends
2. Don’t underestimate people’s capacity for change
3. New stuff sometimes come out of the blue
4. These days it’s best to err on the side of (technological) optimism

Now, Nathan Bransford, at his eponymous blog has posted this:

Monday, March 8, 2010
Don’t Believe the E-book Skeptics

He asserts that eBooks will survive and thrive. Here’s the thing he says that the naysayers ignore: “e-books are only going to get better.

Move over Nostradamus, here are some predictions about our digital book future:

1. The e-book reading experience is only going to improve.
2. E-readers and e-books are only going to get cheaper.
3. Finding the books you want to read will only get easier.
4. People are ignoring the digital trend.
5. Habits change”

Good postings and good arguments. Worth reading and discussing.

Stephen

Now that’s funny. But would anyone bet against this scenario?

Stephen

From some respects I don’t see these netbooks as that different than using a dedicated e-book reader but with more functionality…

You do get some stares if you’re putting 2 or 3 laptops through the scanner at airport security.

Anyway, I thought you might find this Gizmodo comparison of the lastest netbooks on the market helpful if you’re thinking about getting a netbook for Easter or Passover.

They are calling this “Battlemodo“, and only looked at “netbooks powered by Intel’s Pine Trail (Atom N450) processor. Netbooks sporting older processors are a bit cheaper, but they’re also a little slower and don’t achieve the same impressive battery life as Pine Trail.”

So, if you’re considering a netbooks by Acer, HP, Dell, Sony VIAO, or Toshiba check it out.

Stephen

There are many studies on learning styles (just search Google and ou’ll find tons). Kitty pointed me towards Neil Fleming (from the Lincoln University, New Zealand) and his theory of learning called VARK. He has developed a questionnaire that creates a profile of your learning preferences and the way you mentally receive and provide information. In his very complex study, Fleming notes four basic types of learners.

Visual learners learn best via pictures, diagrams, illustrations, video, patterns, and colors.
Auditory learners learn best by listening, e.g. lectures, recordings, radio.
Reading /writing learners learn best by reading /writing.
Tactile learners learn best by experience, activity, or experimentation.

Information basically becomes knowledge through a process called learning. I believe that by understanding how learning happens we can mazimize the learning experience and improve information and knowledge transfer.

You can try VARK out or yourself. Just complete VARK ‘s sixteen multiple-choice questions (which takes about four minutes), then you’ll be asked a few general questions about yourself. Kitty reports that from more than twenty years of VARK responses:

“58% thought VARK matched their leaning style.
38% were unsure if VARK had, in fact, identified their learning style.
4% said VARK had not matched their learning style.”

Can VARK be of any use to the library community?

Take the questionnaire (it’s free) and let me know what you think in the comments.

VARK Learning Styles Questionnaire

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

Here are my scores (and not a surprise to me):

Your scores were:

Visual: 4
Aural: 3
Read/Write: 3
Kinesthetic: 6

I have a mild Kinesthetic learning preference.

Stephen

Boomers Slowly Joining the Mobile Web

“New statistics about baby boomers’ usage of the mobile web are here, and the news, sadly, is not surprising. This generation of users (ages 45 and older) has been slow to adopt mobile Internet technology. However, that’s not to say they aren’t getting on board with the mobile web revolution – they’re just taking a little more time to get here than the other demographic groups surveyed.

Today, only 55% of boomers consider their mobile phone a necessity, a number which likely shocks younger generations whose attachment to their handheld device is so strong, they claim to “feel naked without it.”"

More after the link.

Stephen

I think this is interesting from Hitwise.

Facebook Users Lean Toward Broadcast Media Over Print

When Facebook users are sharing ‘news’, do they prefer to link to print media or other media? Apparently the choice is other media and that the Weather Channel is the top shared news source.

Stephen

2010 + 10 Trends: Predictions and Provocations

This blog is consistently one of the most intelligent and challenging conversations about the future.

My favourite pages were “50 Facts for the Future” and “100 Words for 2010″.

Stephen