RK's Musings

Sarah Palin, Web Invention

Link : How a college sophomore put Alaska's governor on the map

Pagerank Algo - Used in Hospital !

Pagerank algo is being used by a hospital , objective - to cut down infections!!

Via : Google tool could search out hospital superbugs

Our new model is based very much on the way Google has achieved number one status among search engines," he explains. "When [Google's] spiders crawl the web they build up a connectivity matrix of links between pages."
Node search

Shepherd's idea is to build a similar matrix describing all interactions between people and objects in a hospital ward, based on observing normal daily activity.

Daniel : Wonder Kid

Daniel, a 20 year old who can rattle off 22000 decimal places of Pi, learn any language in a week, mixed numbers with visual imagery....He is probably one of the rarest folks to inhabit this planet...WOW

Link : Video

Job posting for a Blog writer in INDIA !!

Look at this job posting for a Blog writer!!! . Have people in India starting to care for Digital Identity ?
Blog writer

Blog writer
Posted by: Susmita Sen

Posted date: 04-11-2006

His / Her responsibilities will include updating new content on a daily basis for our Blog networks on Holidays and other Events, posting comments on relevant blogs, creating various profiles on different Social Networking websites, socializing with like minded friends in these networks, forming communities through such networks and marketing our e-cards, reaching out to wider user groups across the internet by targeting the social community websites.

A year later : Little Miss Matched

Littlemismatched.com : I came across this PurpleCow a year back when they were in a beta stage. It was definitely an wacky edgy concept tht 4 people were trying to push. Forward it to July 2006, they have exploded the market with great success

A little about them :

The fledgling company sells socks that do not match, in a variety of colors and patterns. To ensure that every sock has its independence, they come exclusively in odd numbered packs of three and seven.

"The missing sock is never going to go away," said Arielle Eckstut, one of the company's founders. "This is a way to really have fun with a real-world problem: that people lose their socks ... Let's embrace the problem, and run with it."

Conceived of in 2003, LittleMissMatched has exploded in the past year. Today, more than 600,000 of its socks can be found in more than 600 stores, according to the company's three founders. One of them, Jonah Staw, has told National Public Radio that LittleMissMatched could soon be worth $100 million.

Genuine Vs Fake Smile

BBC - Science & Nature - Human Body and Mind - Mind - Flavour and Personality test

Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling.

Although fake smiles often look very similar to genuine smiles, they are actually slightly different, because they are brought about by different muscles, which are controlled by different parts of the brain.

Fake smiles can be performed at will, because the brain signals that create them come from the conscious part of the brain and prompt the zygomaticus major muscles in the cheeks to contract. These are the muscles that pull the corners of the mouth outwards.

Genuine smiles, on the other hand, are generated by the unconscious brain, so are automatic. When people feel pleasure, signals pass through the part of the brain that processes emotion. As well as making the mouth muscles move, the muscles that raise the cheeks – the orbicularis oculi and the pars orbitalis – also contract, making the eyes crease up, and the eyebrows dip slightly.
Lines around the eyes do sometimes appear in intense fake smiles, and the cheeks may bunch up, making it look as if the eyes are contracting and the smile is genuine. But there are a few key signs that distinguish these smiles from real ones. For example, when a smile is genuine, the eye cover fold - the fleshy part of the eye between the eyebrow and the eyelid - moves downwards and the end of the eyebrows dip slightly.

1-800-GOT-JUNK

Applying Franchise model ( MacDonalds) to Junk:

In 1989, university student Brian Scudamore encountered a tight summer job market in Vancouver, BC. It was that summer, while waiting at a McDonald's drive-thru, that Brian discovered his future career in junk. Brian spotted a beat up junk truck with Mark's Hauling painted on the side, and was inspired to spend his last $700 on a used pickup and start his own junk removal service.

After three increasingly successful summers, Brian knew it was time to take his Business to the next level. He invested in more trucks, hired student drivers, and set out to make his company and its phone number a household name- 1-800-GOT-JUNK? The World's Largest Junk Removal Service.

Since 1997, the company has enjoyed exponential growth and widespread recognition from the media and business world.

Quote for the day

"Success is never final, and failure never fatal."

Quote for the day

"Success is never final, and failure never fatal."

Will Vinton Studios

Will Vinton studios : Another example of a company which believes that employees are entrepreneurial in nature and hence it is better to create a culture to hone it rather than stifle it.

Via Jstrande:
To attract the very best artists, and then to give them plenty of reasons to stay, Vinton has instituted programs and policies that are designed to show his support for the artists he hires. The Walkabout, for example, is a program that allows employees to take a 13-week paid hiatus, or Walkabout, that gives them the time and the freedom to work on their own projects. Every year, the program results in two or three short films, as well as many other personal projects. The logic behind Vinton's decision to implement the program is unassailable: The best people will find a way to produce their own films, whether he wants them to or not. So why not make it harder for them to leave his company by encouraging them to produce projects of their own on his premises?

Typeface for text

"Design rules now" is one of the takeaways of purple cow and I cannot help but notice the various pointers to the same direction by authors, entrepreneurs, investors, and whole bunch of people. Beauty in things be it design part or execution part was always cherished by customers, but in this ever commoditizing world, it becomes even more important.
There are a zillion aspects to the design angle. Let me atleast get my first post on design. Lets talk about typeface. If one delves in to it, there are actually a lot of aspects that go in to , selecting the right typeface for the text.Legibility and readability are the hallmarks of a good typeface. Here are a few tips to choose the right typeface
1.Pick a typeface with similar character widths
2.Medium height to width ratio
3. Medium x- height ( x-height is the height of the lowest case character)
4. Look for small variations in stroke weight
5.Watch out mirrors in alphabets
6.Avoid overlarge letters
7.Avoid quirkiness as the text becomes difficult to read

Some of the best known typeface are : Casion , Garamond,  Stone Serif , Jason Text 55 Roman.

History of Poisson Distribution

The history of poisson distribution is an interesting case. It was simultaneously discovered by 2 people. One was Polish Mathematician who tried to explain the incidence of deaths from horse kicks amongst the Prussian military. He did so from his university office, with out the slightest knowledge of German army training

 

The second person who discovered was a man by name William Gausset , who went by the pen name " Student". He was an employee of a Guinness beer company and came up with statistical methods to enable the quality of brews to be monitored in a cost effective manner. Unknowingly Gausset using his articles, has made a significant contribution to the field of statistics