Mind Hacks links to discussion of eBay auction silliness. In trials, people prefer to pay $5+$6 shiping for a CD than $10 for a CD with free shipping. It was a controlled trial:
multiple auctions with different price-postage ratios revealed a net preference for low item price and a poor correlation between auction success and stated postage costs
Now the obvious thought is that we’re sub-rational idiots. However, if I was presented with 5+6 or 10, I’d not buy the 10 because I’d be looking to satisfice 5+x<10. It’s one of my big gripes about online shopping that sites try to hide shipping charges. I’ve abandoned many shopping baskets due to unexpected shipping charges that weren’t at least mentioned at “add to basket” time.
Ortholog has a nice tie up with “Influence“, which looks like a good discussion of why we do the things we don’t want to.
Cosmic Variance has a lovely explanation of how the quantum interrogation aspect of counterfactual computation might work. So I’ve moved on from last week.
Nice organising principles for Wikipedia entries.
Democracy TV looks like a nice integration of Bittorrent and RSS to get channels to you for watching when you want. On the other side of the media, FluidEffect has a useful before/after feature in its portfolio to show you quite how much photoshopping we don’t know about or notice these days.
It has to be said that the default Mac desktop + Dock + menu bar with addins + some downloads you haven’t yet removed from your desktop is pretty busy. Here are some nice tips from 43 Folders plus others on how to unclutter. Full screen mode + dock hiding really make sense (especially on what feels like a tiny 1024×768 screen – even if it is a 28 inch LCD TV!).
Yet more funked up subway maps.
Mike Cross talks to the importance of Government Connect. He’s right, and there’s a lot of changes coming in that space.
An article which made me think. I strongly believe that I’m seeing and hearing fewer and fewer ads in my life thanks to:
- Sky+ (almost never watch ads now, even on live Rugby matches, because we just hit pause)
- TV downloads (kind Canadians have removed the adverts from, e.g. Lost series 2 – just getting good at episode 8, by the way)
- MP3 player (never listen to podcasts, just chunking through my 6000 songs)
Does this mean that I’m weakening some of the implicit associations that I’ve built up over thirty years?
Apparently waving your hands more equals better (more effective) teaching.
UK local government tried life events and moved on. Directgov has life events and they seem OK. Now the EU wants them as part of the new i2010 framework so that Jonas and Gabriella can get married:
- “life-time events”
- “business-events”
- semanticinteroperability (e.g. transalation between “forms”)
- technical interoperability
I still don’t think that people work on the “multiple tasks on the same visit” that these events suppose. Certainly in my head I have a list of things I need to do at one of these events and then do them one-by-one, mostly because I’m not sure how the information flows work as we move through the system.
I guess this is where joined up government could help, in saying “we’ve done the thinking for you, just trust us”. And that’s where it would all fall down – the “t” word.