Category: All

All posts across the whole website belong to this category. They might also belong to some other categories as well, but this one holds all of them. Hence the descriptive name – All.

Day in brief

Presentation is everything

The following video is one of the excellent examples of how important the presentation is.  I’ve been told a billion times, and I’ve said it myself a few more, that nobody cares about the work you’ve done until it looks good.  Yes, sure you can get a few geeky friends to take a look and appreciate the smart algorithm or an elegant solution to the problem.  But if you want to make it big time – work on the packaging of your work as much, if not more than on the actual result itself.  If in doubt, watch the video.  If not – watch it anyway.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9J1b3MqiX8]

By the way, one other thing I want to point out about eating the food someone else cooked – if you are not sure you can handle the truth, don’t ask for it.

Via you are not as smart as you think you are.

TV for the new age – YouTube Leanback

Today I found about yet another attempt of YouTube to shift more of the traditional TV audience online.  The experiment is called YouTube Leanback and it is currently in beta.  Once you go to that address, it’s like switching on the TV set – immediate full screen video display.  By default, the videos are chosen from your own feed – subscriptions, friends, social connections, etc.  But you can switch to categories and search as fast as you can switch channels on your normal TV.  The interface is completely keyboard navigated, which is a new thing for me on YouTube, but it is so fast and intuitive that it takes about 3 seconds to get used to.

I’ve mentioned some time ago that Miro is the easiest way to watch online videos that I ever came across.  It still is, if we are talking for the whole web (different sites, different formats, different feeds, etc).  But YouTube Leanback is by far the easiest way to watch YouTube videos.  In fact, after about 5 minutes of using it, I have subscribed to all those channels that I am used to seeing in Miro that broadcast on YouTube.   This way I will have much faster and easier access to my videos and will only need to download with Miro those that don’t use YouTube.  For some reason. Which is beyond me.

Moves like this are exciting.  I am much interested in seeing how the Web will transform TV, which parts will move online and how fast, and which parts will stay with traditional broadcasting.  YouTube is right on the spot here – there are billions of videos online, but there is still no easy way to access them all, search, sort and select.  YouTube Leanback is a large step in the right direction.

Drowning doesn’t look like drowning

While being common knowledge between people who work on water (life guards, maritime professionals, etc), this still might be quite a shock for all the rest – drowning doesn’t look like drowning.  Most drownings you saw in movies and on TV are nothing like what a real thing is.  Here is a quote from the article that you should definitely read:

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D.,  is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water.  And it does not look like most people expect.  There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind.  To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this:  It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult.  In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening.

Via kottke.org.