Monday, January 23, 2012

Bunker Roy: Learning at the Barefoot College



Sanjit “Bunker” Roy is the founder of Barefoot College, which helps rural communities becomes self-sufficient. Full bio and more links
 
In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

ALTER-EU: The Alliance for Transparency in Lobbying

Clean up Brussels' Lobby Scene with ALTER-EU from ALTER-EU on Vimeo.


Short video clip explaining ways in which the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) wants to clean up Brussels' lobby scene.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Good Communication Quotes

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker
2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw
3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats
4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

5. "Speak when you are angry -- and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." - Laurence Peters
6. "In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." - Stephen Covey
7. "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." - Stephen King
8. "Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." - Walt Disney
9. "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
10. "The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." - Sydney Harris

11. "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." - Rollo May
12. "Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." - Leo Rosten
13. "Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." - Earl Wilson
14. "Communication is everyone's panacea for everything." - Tom Peters
15. "Two monologues do not make a dialogue." - Jeff Daly
16. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato
17. "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." - D.H. Lawrence
18. "Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening." - Emma Thompson
19. "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway
20. "You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - Scott Peck
21. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." - Mark Twain
22. "That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of saying." - Cervantes
23. "I have an answering machine in my car. It says, 'I'm home right now. But leave a message and I'll call you when I'm out.'" - Steven Wright
24. "Give me the gift of a listening heart." - King Solomon

10 Books Every Leader Should Read

1. The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. A masterpiece of evidence-based management. A strong argument for "the devil's in the details."

2. Influence by Robert Cialdini. A classic book about how to persuade people to do things, how to defend against persuasion attempts, and the underlying evidence.

3.Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath. A modern masterpiece, an immediate classic. How to design ideas that people will remember and act on.

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, this book is surprisingly readable. A book about how humans really think, and although it isn't designed to do this, Kahneman also shows how much of the stuff you read in the business press is rubbish.

5. Collaboration by Morten Hansen. He has another bestseller jointly penned with Jim Collins called Great By Choice. The best book ever written about what it takes to build an organisation where people share information, cooperate, and help each other succeed.

6. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie. It is the best creativity book ever written, possibly the best business book ever written. Gordon's voice and love of creativity and self-expression, and how to make it happen despite the obstacles that unwittingly heartless organizations put in the way, make this book an essential read.

7. The Pixar Touch by David Price. You can read how Ed Catmull, along with other amazing characters, after amazing setbacks, weird moments, and one strange twist after another, realized Ed's dream after working on it for decades. Jobs was rarely rude or obnoxious in his dealings with people at Pixar because he knew they knew more than him, and even he was infected by Pixar's norm of civility.

8. Men and Women of the Corporation Rosabeth Moss Kanter. The classic book about the gender dynamics in organisations. This is the book that brought us the phrase "Homosocial Reproduction," the tendency of groups to bring in people who look and act just like them. This book is beneficial because it gets beyond gender to show how corporations really work, albeit in a not very flattering but instructive light.

9. Leading Teams by J. Richard Hackman. When it comes to the topic of groups or teams, there is Hackman and there is everyone else. If you want a light feel good romp that isn't very evidence-based, read The Wisdom of Teams. If you want to know how teams really work and what it really takes to build, sustain, and lead them from a man who has been immersed in the problem as a researcher, coach, consultant, and designer for over 40 years, this is the book for you.

10. Who Says that Elephants Can't Dance? By Louis Gerstner. Organisational change is difficult, especially in a huge and old established company. This book shows it isn't impossible and how one leadership team did it in one of the most iconic companies. People believe Apple is impressive but corporations come, blossom and then go. Let's see if Apple is still around in 25 years.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine



Hans Rosling states that the washing machine was indeed the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution, enabling everything from economic development through electrical efficiency to intellectual growth by reallocating free time for reading.

An interesting parallel emerges when we examine Rosling’s talk in alongside Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: The washing machine is the antithesis of television, freeing up the same kind of “cognitive surplus” — excess human creative and intellectual energy — that, according to Shirky’s central argument, TV absorbed, a parallel that bespeaks the universal duality of innovation and the incredible potential of technology as a force of social change the polarity of which we get to choose.

Cufflinks That Double as a Wi-Fi Hotspot

Yes, we all remember the endless parade of cufflinks that doubled as USB storage drives, if you missed it, it happened maybe four or five years ago.

But this is Y2K12, and there’s a new breed of high-tech cufflinks in town.

While one cufflink in the set of Polished Silver Oval Wifi and 2GB USB Cufflinks that Brookstone is selling indeed doubles as a USB storage drive

The other cufflink is an honest-to-goodness USB Wi-Fi hotspot. Why is this important?

Let’s say you’re at a wedding and the wireless router kicks the bucket. Just hook a laptop directly into the cable modem and then stick the Wi-Fi cufflink into one of the laptop’s USB ports.

In no time at all, you’ve got yourself a new wireless hotspot that all the guests can use to surf the web on their Wi-Fi-enabled devices.


This sounds like a boring wedding, but you just made it exponentially more interesting by being the guest with the Wi-Fi cufflinks, so there’s that.

The Wi-Fi cufflink requires software to be installed on the host computer, which you can download first or store on the other cufflink that doubles as a USB storage drive.


The cufflinks cost $250, but if you regularly purchase cufflinks, you probably have that kind of money in your cufflink budget.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Language and Communications: Are Words the best Solution?

Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious, as a way for individuals to exchange information, linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years.

Many prominent linguists, including MIT’s Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is, in fact, poorly designed for communication. Such a use, they say, is merely a byproduct of a system that probably evolved for other reasons, perhaps for structuring our own private thoughts.

To provide evidence, these linguists point to the existence of ambiguity: In a system optimized for conveying information between a speaker and a listener, they argue, each word would have just one meaning, eliminating any chance of confusion or misunderstanding.

Now, a group of MIT cognitive scientists has turned this idea on its head. In a new theory, they claim that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

“Various people have said that ambiguity is a problem for communication,” says Ted Gibson, an MIT professor of cognitive science and senior author of a paper describing the research to appear in the journal Cognition. “But once we understand that context disambiguates, then ambiguity is not a problem, it’s something you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy [words] in different contexts over and over again.”

Lead author of the paper is Steven Piantadosi PhD ’11; Harry Tily, a postdoc in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, is another co-author.

What do you ‘mean’?
For a somewhat ironic example of ambiguity, consider the word “mean.” It can mean, of course, to indicate or signify, but it can also refer to an intention or purpose (“I meant to go to the store”); something offensive or nasty; or the mathematical average of a set of numbers.

Adding an ‘s’ introduces even more potential definitions: an instrument or method (“a means to an end”), or financial resources (“to live within one’s means”).

But virtually no speaker of English gets confused when he or she hears the word “mean.” That’s because the different senses of the word occur in such different contexts as to allow listeners to infer its meaning nearly automatically.

Given the disambiguating power of context, the researchers hypothesized that languages might harness ambiguity to reuse words, most likely, the easiest words for language processing systems.

Building on observation and previous studies, they posited that words with fewer syllables, high frequency and the simplest pronunciations should have the most meanings.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday, the 13th, and 10 other unpronouncable phobias

According to psychologists, people with paraskevidekatriaphobia have a "blind, unreasoning fear of Friday the 13th"

"Paraskevidekatriaphobia -- when you learn to pronounce it, you're cured!"

Here are 10 other phobias that you probably cannot pronounce:

1. Friggatriskaidekaphobia: also the fear of Friday, the 13th. It derives from the words "Frigga," which is the name of the Norse goddess for whom "Friday" is named and "triskaidekaphobia," which means fear of the number 13.
2. Kakorraphiaphobia: fear of failure.
3. Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
4. Giraffeophobia: fear of sticking your neck out.
5. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia: fear of "666."
7. Psellismophobia: fear of stuttering.
8. Aichmophobia: a morbid fear of sharp objects.
9. Spheksophobia: fear of wasps.
10. Sesquipedaliophobia: fear of long words.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Typophile Film: Brent Jackson

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.


Even though it’s been around for a few years, if you haven’t seen this wonderful video created for the 5th Typophile Film Festival by BYU design students, it really is an impressive piece of work, especially seeing as no CG effects were used in its production. Enjoy!

Friday, January 13, 2012

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

The first book to reveal and dissect the technical aspect of many social engineering manoeuvres.

From elicitation, pretexting, influence and manipulation all aspects of social engineering are picked apart, discussed and explained by using real world examples, personal experience and the science behind them to unraveled the mystery in social engineering.


Kevin Mitnick: One of the most famous social engineers in the world. popularised the term “social engineering.”

He explained that it is much easier to trick someone into revealing a password for a system than to exert the effort of hacking into the system.

Mitnick claims that this social engineering tactic was the single-most effective method in his arsenal.

This indispensable book examines a variety of maneuvers that are aimed at deceiving unsuspecting victims, while it also addresses ways to prevent social engineering threats.
  • Examines social engineering, the science of influencing a target to perform a desired task or divulge information 
  • Arms you with invaluable information about the many methods of trickery that hackers use in order to gather information with the intent of executing identity theft, fraud, or gaining computer system access 
  • Reveals vital steps for preventing social engineering threats
Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking does its part to prepare you against nefarious hackers—now you can do your part by putting to good use the critical information within its pages.


Tour the Dark World of Social Engineering
  • Learn the psychological principles employed by social engineers and how they’re used
  • Discover persuasion secrets that social engineers know well
  • See how the crafty crook takes advantage of cameras, GPS devices, and caller ID
  • Find out what information is, unbelievably, available online
  • Study real-world social engineering exploits step by step
“Most malware and client-side attacks have a social engineering component to deceive the user into letting the bad guys in. You can patch technical vulnerabilities as they evolve, but there is no patch for stupidity, or rather gullibility. Chris will show you how it’s done by revealing the social engineering vectors used by today’s intruders. His book will help you gain better insight on how to recognize these types of attacks.”
Kevin Mitnick, Author, Speaker, and Consultant

“Chris Hadnagy has penned the ultimate text on social engineering. Meticulously researched and teeming with practical applications, this brilliant book offers solutions to very real problems and ever-present dangers to your business — and even to yourself. Truly groundbreaking.”
Kevin Hogan, author of The Science of Influence: How to Get Anyone to Say “Yes” in 8 Minutes or Less

Read More at Elite Professionals website

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Top German cop uses spyware on daughter, gets hacked in retaliation

Trojans—they're not just for hackers anymore. German police, for instance, love them; a scandal erupted in Parliament last year after federal investigators were found to be using custom spyware that could potentially record far more information than allowed by law. The story made headlines, but it lacked a certain sense of the bizarre.

Fortunately for connoisseurs of the weird, Der Spiegel revealed a stranger story in its magazine yesterday. According to the report, a top German security official installed a trojan on his own daughter's computer to monitor her Internet usage. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing—well, at least until one of the daughter's friends found the installed spyware. The friend then went after the dad's personal computer as a payback and managed to get in, where he found a cache of security-related e-mails from work. The e-mails, in turn, provided the information necessary for hackers to infiltrate Germany's federal police.

That was bad, but it got worse. The hackers got into the servers for the "Patras" program, which logs location data on suspected criminals through cell phone and car GPS systems. Concerned about security breaches, the government eventually had to take the entire set of Patras servers offline.

One moral of the tale: parents, think hard before taking technical measures against your own kids. There's a better than average chance that they—or their friends—know more than you do.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Joy of Books - YouTube



Last year, “crazedadman” and his wife reorganized a small bookshelf and recorded the project in an endearing stop motion film.

This year, they took things to the next level, spending “sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.”  The rest speaks for itself.

The Shrinking Cyberspace Environment


As William Gibson, the author who coined the word in his science fiction, put it, cyberspace was the cool “consensual illusion” experienced by billions of users of the world’s online networks, an unthinkably complex “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.” 

His fellow author Bruce Sterling said, cyberspace was that mental plane where we go during a phone conversation. It was that strangely perilous and exciting realm where l33t hackers might be kings and revolutionaries, where new mega-fortunes would be won.

It seemed that way a decade and more ago, as multitudes started going online for the first time. 

Today, both the word and the ideals it represented have fallen on hard times, for better or worse. Cyberspace, which once sounded like the digital Promised Land, has become the fabled lost continent of Netlantis.

The story of what happened to cyberspace may say something about how metaphors and jargon help us to grasp the potential of new technologies — and how they become obsolete.

Shrinking cyberspace
These thoughts came to mind not long ago when I chanced across the word while reading and realized how long it had been since I’d last heard it. 

The word may have always seemed a little nerdy and embarrassing, but for a while during the late 1990s, it seemed almost inescapable in tech news stories and popular culture. 

Given how ubiquitous computing and online communications have become, could cyberspace really have fallen so far out of favour?

To check whether my sense of the term’s disuse was accurate, I did some unscientific surveys of the word’s occurrences over the past couple of decades, starting with Lexis-Nexis searches through back issues of various newspapers.
 

(I had hoped to do broader, more collective searches across groups and categories of publications but my Lexis-Nexis service wouldn’t tabulate more than 3,000 hits at a time, which truncated the results.)

The pattern was obvious and fairly consistent. After scarcely appearing at all, “cyberspace” started to explode in late 1993 and 1994, coinciding with the introduction of the Mosaic web browser — the software that made the Web accessible and the Internet much more useful for most of the public.

The word faded, though, with the dot-com era (it may have started to go even earlier: coverage of the dot-com stock bubble may have slightly juiced up its numbers around 2000). It has weakly persisted or been in slight decline ever since.

A similar search for the use of “cyberspace” in books using Google’s Ngram Viewer yielded a similar pattern.
 

Hypothesising that writers might have started using “Internet” or “the Web” as replacements for “cyberspace,” I compared their usage as well. 

The results don’t prove anything but they’re certainly suggestive: those other online terms grew robustly long after cyberspace dropped off.

 

Cyberspace’s bad fortunes at first seem perplexing. A billion more people are online today than at the word’s peak.

Second Life, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, low-cost virtual reality gear, and consumer-level motion-capture tech like Microsoft’s Kinect have made digital spaces into real places for tens of millions of people. 

Why would “cyberspace” lose traction when the concept has more relevance than ever?

Verbal mission creep
Cyberspace started out as narrowly signifying only the representation of users’ experience while interacting with computer systems and data structures.

It didn’t even necessarily connote something as sophisticated as immersive virtual reality; early proponents of the term were happy to accept type interfaces as manifestations of cyberspace.

But the slippery notion that it also represented a mind set — the place where the mind wandered while online — helped to guarantee the expansion of that definition. 

Over the objections of purists and with the help of bemused and dazzled journalists, cyberspace gradually became loosely synonymous with both the Web and the Internet for many people.

And with that expanded definition came pronouncements that made the rise of cyberspace more mythic and millennial.

For some, it stopped being just a metaphorical construct: it became a digitized domain of pure thought and potentially infinite freedom.

John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, spoke for all of them in his “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” which begins:
Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. … You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
The normal constraints and rules didn’t need to apply.

Read more of this article here: SmartPlanet

Monday, January 9, 2012

Unemployed? How Long Does It Really Take to Find another Job?

One of the most nagging questions in job seekers' minds is how long it will take to find a new job. A survey of 600 job seekers conducted at the end of last month gives an indication of the length of time it's taking job seekers to find jobs in today's market.

Of the 600 job seekers polled, 77 percent were unemployed. The remaining 23% had jobs. Of the more than three-quarters who were unemployed, nearly half had been out of work for more than a year:

49 percent had been out of work for more than a year
8 percent had been out of work 10 to 12 months
5 percent had been out of work for seven to nine months
16 percent had been out of work for four to six months
20 percent had been out of work for one to three months

Of the nearly 50 percent of job seekers who've been unemployed for more than a year, 60 percent of those long-term job seekers have been out of work for two years and counting.

In a press release announcing the survey results, it was noted that some of the job seekers who've been out of work two-plus years are stay-home-moms and retirees hoping to return to the workforce.

When asked, both employed and unemployed job seekers how long they thought it would take to land a new job,

28 percent are confident they can find something new within 3 months
37 percent expect the job search to take four to six months
14 percent think it will take seven to nine months
12 percent anticipate the job search will take 10 to 12 months
10 percent believe they'll be looking for a new job for more than a year.

Overall, the majority of callers – 65 percent – felt they would find a job in six months or less. Is that a realistic assessment? In a healthy economy, a successful job search might take two to three months. In a tight job market, such as now, it is not unusual to see even high-quality candidates take four to six months.

Job seekers have reason to be more optimistic about the labour market and their chances of finding a new job this year. He notes that private sector layoffs are down and that hiring is on the rise.

Indeed, according to the unemployment report the U.S. Labour Department released last Friday, employment increased by 200,000 in December, and the number of unemployed Americans, along with the unemployment rate, continued to tick downward. The unemployment rate is now at 8.5 percent and 13.1 million people are counted as unemployed, down from 9.4 percent and 14.5 million a year ago.

Let's look at the numbers! Organisations need to hire nearly four million people every month just to replace the 2 million people who quit their jobs each month, plus the 250,000 to 350,000 workers who retire, transfer to new locations, or otherwise can't work, and the "hundreds of thousands" of others who get fired for cause.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Bungee Jump Failure followed quickly by First Responder Failure!



A 22-year-old Australian backpacker says it is a "miracle" she is alive after her cord snapped during a bungee jump over the Zambesi River on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

She survived the fall into the river but the rope got snagged on submersed rocks. Having freed herself from that situation she managed to swim to shore.

First Responders on the shore made a disasterous mistake of turning her onto her back, whereby the water in her lungs could not be exhaled easily and started to choke and effectively 'drown' her on land!

Always put casualties in the recovery position to maximise their chance of recovery.

Happily, this young lady survived but she was fighting against the odds to do so.

Sleep Infographic: What If You Don't Sleep Enough?


To see the full Infographic chart click on the sample image.

How many times have you told yourself "... it's just sleep." but what happens to your health when you're not sleeping enough?

This infographic designed by FFunction for Zeo, a company that makes an electronic "sleep coach," is less of a real data visualization than a set of illustrated facts but those facts are pretty impressive.

For example, we seem pretty tired all the time and only 7% of people get the necessary eight hours of sleep at night but the effects of this might be more than inconvenient. They may be disasterous.

Getting less sleep is now associated with a 200% rise in cancer, a 100% rise in heart disease, and a 20% rise in the likelihood you'll be dead in 20 years.

UnfortunatelY, not only will you be less healthy, you'll also be fatter. People who sleep an hour more each day lose 14.3 pounds per year and 1 in 3 women find themselves too sleepy for sex!

Studies have shown that sleeping too little effectively puts the body on "high alert," creating increased stress hormones and chemicals associated with inflammation.

Social Media: Lessons from Dr Seus

Dr. Seuss' rhyming wisdom provides social media lessons for all of us. Here are a few:

1. "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you." Be yourself on social media platforms and reveal your true essence. Don't try to be someone else. To this end, don't pass someone else's content off as yours.

Social media tip: Show who you are with your avatar and profiles. Include information that proves you're human.

2. "So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads." Great advice for social media where space is limited and participants are constantly bombarded with information. Keep your messages short and on target

Social media tip: Integrate your branding into your social media interactions through your language, voice and graphics. Dr. Seuss' tweets would sound like Dr. Seuss without needing identification.

3. "Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." Given broad based use of social media, it's easy to forget your social media peers may not be native speakers of your language or may have a different understanding of the same event.

Social media tip: Be a social media resource and help others whenever and wherever possible. Support those around you.

4. "For a host, above all, must be kind to his guests." No place is this truer than on social media platforms where you should be polite and free of all scorn. Remember—you don't know someone's background, so err on the polite side.

Social media tip: Be generous in your advice and participation on social media networks and pay-it-forward.

5. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Dr. Seuss packed a lot of social media sense into a short phrase. In 2011, social media showed how people around the world could support others half a world away during the Egyptian revolution and the Japanese tsunami.

On social media platforms, everyone has responsibility to make their forums safe. There shouldn't be cyber bullying or other issues where real people are hurt by what's said without thinking.

Social media tip: Social media has social responsibility! Take a stand on social media where appropriate to make them safer for people in need or danger.

6. "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Dr. Seuss' words ring true on social media where it's important to be transparent. While this involves telling the truth, it doesn't mean divulging confidential information that would harm an individual or a business.

Social media tip: Help your employees by developing a set of social media guidelines so they know what's acceptable to say on social media networks when they represent your firm as well as when they're engaging as individuals. Be aware that privacy on many social media entities can be elusive.

7. "Oh, the things you can find if you don't stay behind!" Learn to be a social media extrovert and engage with others across a wide variety of interests.

Social media tip: Build a social media tribe to engage with. Pay-it-forward on social media platforms like question and answer sites and participate in group discussions such as Twitter chats.

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss quote and how does it relate to social media?

Saturday, January 7, 2012

People who Became a Noun - Video



This reminded me of a lovely illustrated children’s book called If You Were a Noun.

The TOOB! The New Gamers Immersive Domed Console - Video



WHAT IS THE PLAN?
TOOB plans to manufacture and sell the world’s first affordable dome displays. TOOB has spent the last 2 years developing its 2nd generation product TOOB Earth.

WHAT IS TOOB Earth?
TOOB Earth is a 1.2 Metre (4ft) diameter half dome which when used with a standard projector fitted with a standard lens can project an image onto the inside curved surface giving the viewer the sense of being fully immersed in the content. Think IMAX/ OMNI MAX but in the home.

One of the key differentiator's is that the projector and screen are all contained within the same footprint meaning you no longer need to compromise on space.

TOOB Earth is the first in a range of dome products planned and will be the foundation for the world’s first consumer focused Gaming/ Simulation/ Film curved screen company.

Its uniquely patented design allows you to place your dome on any hard surface or on our GRAVITY-E adjustable stand.
Using the GRAVITY-E stand adds a further layer of flexibility as it then allows you to either use TOOBs brand new TSR/ TFX & M-spec simulation rigs
or use many existing racing or flight rigs which can be comfortably slide underneath. Or simply use the GRAVITY-E as a furniture piece in your room for watching stereo 3D movies.

CORPORATE
TOOB is well suited for the corporate environment and this is a great opportunity to get a TOOB and be one of the first to showcase TOOB Dome technology with your business.

TOOB's 007 reward shows how you can take a TOOB product and customise it with a unique brand or design.

In April 2011 TOOB attended the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham (UK) visted by over 40,000 tech hungry guests.

TOOB was so popular it increased footfall on our partners stand by thousands. The increased footfall generated more sales.

TOOB gave 1400 demos during the event. That guarenteed 1400 more potential customers + the 1000s of people that stoped to look at the technology.
(T.O.O.B. LTD acknowledges all rights, copyrights and trademarks of 3rd parties, the above image is an artists illustration only)


Friday, January 6, 2012

Unemployment: New Jobs are Taken by College Graduates

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To steal and expand upon a point Betsey Stevenson made on Twitter earlier, it's striking the extent to which employment growth over the past month and the past year was concentrated among college graduates.

In part that's just what you expect from a weak labor market. When workers arescarce, you hire underqualified people and try to train them.

When workers are plentiful, you hire the most qualified people around and count yourself lucky but polarization in the American job market is nothing new and we see a continuation of a trend that was visible across the growth of the aughts.

A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation - Slideshare


Heineken U-code - YouTube



QR codes have been getting a good bit of flak recently as a fad that are mostly used by brands and marketers but ignored by consumers. There have been some pretty silly uses but this latest campaign from Heineken is actually a very smart and social way for them to be used at a music festival.

The idea is that everybody attending can have their own QR code printed and stuck to them which when scanned gives information about them and what they like doing. A bit like their social media profile but in the real world.

As they say in the video music festivals are all about meeting new people and the QR codes were a way for shy people to do this without others thinking that they were freaks although it does involve holdingout your phone and physically scanning somebody.

While it is a smart idea in terms of breaking the ice it works even better for Heineken as a brand as it turns festival goers in to walking billboards for the company.