It’ll probably freak you out, but that’s all the more reason to watch it and then be conscious of what you share on line.

Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises

As a result, Microsoft is in third place in the Tablet space (behind Apple and Android).

Apple re-thought the “personal” computing experience and produced a product so revolutionary that it the implications are still rippling through the rest of the IT ecosystem – and has driven Apple to undreamed of success.

Microsoft did the same thing (ish) but couldn’t bear to release it – that’s the Innovator’s Dilemma in a nutshell. Which Apple appear to have solved, which is an incredible thing to have fixed, if they truly have done so in a systematic manner.

Here’s the original article on CNet.

Very interesting…

But the newly-launched TransferWise service appears to be different:

• They are disruptive – they apparently give better rates by matching pairs of transfers rather than going out into the Markets.
• Their web site is really clean and explains it all well (in contrast to most services which are either phone-only or horribly complex sites).
• They are transparent in what they are trying to do and charge. So much of financial services seems to be designed to baffle you into being swindled.

Oh, and I like their Blog and Story (as well as where their name came from). Disruption with a sense of humour.

I don’t know if we’ll use them – nothing to do with me really – but I do like their approach.

The Internet is making the world a very small place, both in terms of geography and time – both in the speed that things happen but also in how your past never quite leaves you. Interesting times ahead…

Prompted by this post from John Udell about his experience in the Hospice movement, relevant part of which is:

This not only poignant. It also speaks volumes about effective explanation. For a long time my mantra has been: Show, don’t tell. If I show you a concrete example, that’s better than if I just tell you about an abstract principle. But that still leaves you on the outside looking in. If I can instead get you to experience for yourself what I am trying to explain, you will understand in a deep way and you will never forget.

As an aside, I find it heart warming when Blogs allow “Industry Personalities” like John Udell (who I read fanatically in pre-web days) can show a more personal side. We’re all human, and it is nice that people we might encounter in a broadcast-only context feel free to share a more rounded view of themselves.

I’ve only just started to use the Kindle “Clippings” feature, but I am finding it unexpectedly useful for both work-related books and also (surprisingly) some fiction books. I knew I could get my Clippings file onto my Mac but what I didn’t realise (thanks to this post) is that there is a web site http://kindle.amazon.com where you can see the highlights you have made on your books. Which is pretty cool if you just want to go back and try to remember a particular passage.

They also have a nice feature that the front page ends up being a “Flashcard” where you can review passages you have highlighed. They seem to have thought about in detail too:

The periodic review of ideas makes it easier to remember them. This works better if you space the reviews over increasing time intervals, a “Spacing Effect” that was first identified by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Using Default intervals, you will see a highlight or note again after 1 week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and thereafter annually. Alternatively you can choose a fixed review interval.

As an aside, I’m loving the fact that GetAbstract will send summaries direct to my Kindle…

Read here, if you are brave enough, and don’t mind paying to eat Organic Chicken for the rest of your life.

(This popped up as a suggested read on my newly created Reader account before I imported my feeds. Thanks Google, I never was a fan of Chicken Nuggets – but never again!)

This article titled “Low-dose Prozac may help relieve the misery of PMS” was written by Alok Jha, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 17th September 2010 13.43 UTC

Low doses of the anti-anxiety drug Prozac may alleviate the misery of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), scientists have found.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham found that Prozac, known generically as fluoxetine, raises levels of a sex hormone that can drop sharply in women at the end of their menstrual cycle. This sudden drop is thought to cause the symptoms of PMS.

Millions of women around the world suffer the effects of PMS every month in the week before the start of their menstrual period. Symptoms can range from anxiety and irritability to headaches or joint and breast pain.

Not all women show symptoms, but around 75% are thought to experience PMS and, in up to 40% of cases, it can interfere with daily activities. Around 3% of women can experience a severe form of PMS, a psychiatric condition known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

Thelma Lovick, a neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham, thinks she has evidence that a 2mg daily dose of fluoxetine in the final week before menstruation could alleviate PMS. She presented her work at the British Science Festival in Birmingham today and her three-year study on rats, which were induced to have PMS-like symptoms, was funded by the Medical Research Council. Lovick now plans to submit her research to a scientific journal for peer review.

“We’ve got available to us a drug that is already in production, it’s already gone through its safety tests, something we could use at very low dose to perhaps ameliorate the development of pre-menstrual syndrome in women,” said Lovick.

Normally progesterone levels fall during the pre-menstrual period and this is when symptoms appear. “Progesterone is a hormone that circulates in the bloodstream and gets into the brain,” said Lovick. “It breaks down into ALLO and it’s this change in the ALLO concentration in the brain that causes excitability in the nerve circuits in parts of the brain that are involved in emotional behaviour.”

Lovick thinks it is the sharp fall in the brain’s ALLO levels that triggers PMS symptoms. “ALLO can alter the activity of nerve cells, thus it is described as a neuroactive steroid. It enhances the activity of GABA, one of the brain’s inhibitory neurotransmitter chemicals, and in those parts of the brain that process emotional responses, ALLO normally produces calming effects.”

When the levels of progesterone, and hence ALLO, in the brain drop during the final stages of the premenstrual period, that natural inhibition is turned off. “As a consequence these brain circuits become more excitable, leaving the individual more responsive to stress, which is often manifested behaviourally as anxiety and aggressive behaviour.”

If ALLO levels could be allowed to fall gradually at the end of the monthly cycle, thought Lovick, PMS might not develop. She confirmed this idea by monitoring the hormone in rats’ brains as they were administered fluoxetine.

“Millions of women take Prozac but the dose they take it in is relatively high. One of the effects of fluoxetine is that it acts on serotonin systems in the brain, that’s why it’s used as an antidepressant. One of the things it does in addition is increase ALLO concentrations in the brain and it does this at very low doses.”

Tim Kendall of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, warned against self-medicating with fluoxetine. “Prozac is associated with a number of different side-effects. The most common is sexual dysfunction, it can lower libido and induce impotence. It can stop you sleeping and make you anxious and wound-up and affect appetite. And particularly in young people, under the age of 30, it can trigger suicidal thoughts and self-harm. I don’t know if these side-effects would occur at low doses but it would strike me as unwise to start tipping drugs out of capsules.”

Fluoxetine in sometimes prescribed as a treatment for PMS by some doctors in the US, but it is given at doses normally used in antidepressant therapy. Lovick said the standard antidepressant dose – 10-20mg per day – is inappropriate for PMS.

Her research team found that the dose required to produce a response was only a tenth of that found in the most commonly prescribed form of fluoxetine. “And you’d only be taking it for about a week so the side-effect issue should be non-existent,” said Lovick.

The team now want to take their findings out of the lab and into clinical trials.

Kendall agrees that the use of low-dose fluoxetine in PMS needs more study. “PMS makes a lot of women quite miserable and if there is something we can do for them, that would be very good. But it is premature to say this is the thing.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Just imagine then what the pros can do… From RISKS:

?Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 16:26:51 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: WSJ: What Do Online Advertisers Know About You?

Tim Jones, *Wall Street Journal*, 4 Aug 2010

In a groundbreaking new series titled “What They Know,” the *Wall Street
Journal* is taking a close look at the information that online advertisers
collect about you as you browse the Web: “The tracking files represent the
leading edge of a lightly regulated, emerging industry of data-gatherers who
are in effect establishing a new business model for the Internet: one based
on intensive surveillance of people to sell data about, and predictions of,
their interests and activities, in real time.”  What the industry knows
about you may surprise you. The articles examine the world of tracking
cookies, and other less well-known tracking technologies like flash cookies
and beacons. They found that “the nation’s 50 top websites on average
installed 64 pieces of tracking technology onto the computers of visitors,
usually with no warning.”

Using information gathered this way, the advertising industry is able to
accurately guess substantial information about you – often including your
gender, age, income, marital status, credit-rating, and whether you have
children or own a home. The findings are used not only to determine what
advertisements you see, but sometimes to decide what kind of discounts or
credit card offers you’re allowed access to. …
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/what-they-know

What They Know:
http://online.wsj.com/wtk

Online Behavioral Tracking:
http://www.eff.org/issues/online-behavioral-tracking

Scary stuff.

I just did it with a recent post from simoncoles.org and one from elnblog.org and they both came up with David Foster Wallace. Never heard of him before but I’ve just Amazon’d and will see what I think!

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

My main newspapers are The FT, The Economist and The Week. I used to read The Sunday Times but it was increasingly pointless and whilst I might try it for a month I can’t really see me paying for The Times. However, I can see me increasingly reading The Guardian despite it’s left-of-center reputation being slightly out of whack with my normal repertoire.

Anyway, I’ve installed the plugin and shall see how it goes. I often find myself pointing colleagues to various articles, so the plugin might prove useful.

All I need now is for The Guardian to produce an iPad app, and for the FT iPad app to support emailing links to articles…

Then I saw this article which helped explain its popularity:

people are playing Farmville because people are playing Farmville
[snip]
Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations.
[snip]
The most important thing to recognize here is that, whether we like it or not, seventy-three million people are playing Farmville: a boring, repetitive, and potentially dangerous activity that barely qualifies as a game. Seventy-three million people are obligated to a company that holds no reciprocal ethical obligation toward those people.

So what’s interesting is that Farmville is about respecting and reinforcing social bonds – now I feel bad for not actually responding to Clare (sorry, was in a travel week…) but also that Zynga are cleverly using this to line their own pockets. I’m not too sure how I feel – that so many people are using to socially groom each other is a wonderful thing, but that the economic surplus is going to one entity seems a little bit of a shame.

Anyway, at least I understand why people play it, even if I can’t actually get engaged with it myself!

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/danny.offer/downloads.html

Then I bumped into Wikipedia for Schools and the problem is solved!

This 2008/9 Wikipedia DVD Selection is a free, hand-checked, non-commercial selection from Wikipedia, targeted around the UK National Curriculum and useful for much of the English speaking world

Excellent stuff – the power of open content…