How does it feel to be in the flow?

How does it feel to be in the flow?

1. Complete involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing
4. Knowing that activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to task.
5. A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes.
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

[via TED]

I felt this from time to time. And it has other name like “peace of mind”, “zen feeling”.

Update: Here is a diagram of how to get to flow, the nearer to “flow”, the easier it becomes.

How to achieve flow

One Brand Many Things or One Thing Many Brands?

Boagworld explained to me today 10 techniques for an effective ‘call to action’. In which he wrote:

Studies in supermarkets have shown that if the shopper is presented with too many varieties they are less likely to make a purchase.

Many Pantenes on one single shelf

I am a bit skeptical about this “studies”, which I thought could be a conjured case, so I did some googling, leading me to an article published on American Psychology Association.

In the article there is my familiar jam/food/shampoo picking experience:

when shoppers are given the option of choosing among smaller and larger assortments of jam, they show more interest in the larger assortment. But when it comes time to pick just one, they’re 10 times more likely to make a purchase if they choose among six rather than among 24 flavors of jam.

And in an experience where 800,000 employees at 647 companies are given multiple choices about their retirement plan:

When given two choices, 75 percent participated, but when given 59 choices, only 60 percent did

While these two types of experiences remain true to my shopping experience in the supermarket and electronic store, I have also noted what I think is one important aspect of this choice situation: when I have something to buy in mind, especially those products that cost more than $500, I would have some criteria in mind. Fitting those criteria would mean I achieve the goal of buying the right product for use. I have recently bought my Canon VIXIA HV30, a very nice high definition camera. I didn’t go through all the available products on amazon like I would do in the supermarket, looking up and down, being afraid of missing any important product on the shelf. Instead, I just set up some simple filters to pick the features I want (Live Firewire Connection + HighDef), sort the price and read some reviews before I hit the checkout button.

That is explained by Nobel Laureate Herb Simon:

when consumer enters with an articulated preference, they often choose the first decent choice that fits their preference as opposed to exhaustively scanning all options until finding the perfect, or “maximizing” one.

Hope you’ve learnt something, I did.

Difficulty of Being in Singapore

It’s rather difficult to be a technology blogger, like jkOnTheRun or Chris Pirillo in Singapore. Though you can have the virtual palace of your own, claiming the crown of local region, there is never any breaking news in technology. Nearly none of the influential brands with global outreach would launch its products in Singapore first.

The lack of breaking news, the slow arrival of technology products have effectively annihilated the originality of the technology bloggers in Singapore. Just like the banks around the global are becoming more and more similar to each other, having more and more financial derivatives to make money out of complex mathematical formulas, technology bloggers in Singapore are increasingly morphing into the big companies’ PR channels, having only some brief and shallow look at the products during product launches, while being shoved down the throat lots of “PR worthy information”.

In an environment where computer geeks and nerds, coders and programmers are look downed upon comparing with bankers working for Citi,BarCap, etc, I could only see a cloudy future for us who are passionate about technology could survive on our own, staying independent of “larger influence”.

CNN: Let’s Watch Socially.

It has been days since the inauguration of President Obama a week ago, with the close of change.gov and the new whitehose.gov. We can see how this old government will bring change to this old land under the leadership of a new president.

While that is yet to be seen, I still could recall the CNN + Facebook experience I had that day. It was wonderfully executed online. As long as you have logged into your facebook account, you have a tiny conversation box with your friends and everyone, here is a 1 minute screencast explaining what happened on the day:

It was indeed a powerful experience, though dated back to the days when we have no money to afford one TV per house. When the crowd gather to one place, watching the TV program, talking to each other on the programme, or some other randomly interesting topic. The desire inside people wanting to socialize is always there, and CNN facilitated this desire by creating this virtual platform for everyone. The “everyone-come-together-watch-tv-and-talk” experience.

PS:
It’s interesting that some people was wondering that who few people twitterred during the election. I did some research through compete.com, the result is quite shocking:

Facebook Twitter Plurk Comparision

Facebook has 60 million unique visitors per month, comparing with pathetic twitter or plurk. Guess the numbers say all.

Mac Virus has drawn its First Blood in 2009.

If you are using the pirated iWork 09 from the torrent network (instead of just downloading from Apple and use purchase a serial, you might be in serious trouble). According the friendly people at Intego, their security alert showed that more than 20,000 might have been infected with the virus: iWorkServices

iWorkServices is the infected file

It has indeed dawned on me that the mac people are generally not equipped with virus prevention software. Though these virus rarely spread on a real Mac hardware, as comparing with thsoe hacked PCs. The starting of threat of virus might be exaggerated. Soon enough, marketing department will roll out more schemes to ask people to buy in. Or are they simply bored just to create the virus?

Singapore Government Betting on Virtual Worlds

That’s the message I hear from business people who are involved with virtual world applications in Singapore. James Ong from Origami Frontiers put it very straightforward in the following video clip, talking about why he came back from the states after 20 years.

(If the connection is slow, just click and watch the low definition version)

Singapore government is providing funds with a committed $70 million for this sector, if you ask me, that’s a whopping lot of money for a toddler industry. We met up with Dan Lejerskar, who would share his experience later today @ DXO for a casual chatting session. The thing that stroke me is that he knew all along that this industry is hard to form for the general consumers. It takes years to the virtual worlds to come to maturity with other infrastructures of the consumers. Meanwhile, he is focusing on the application of virtual reality of corporations who has the deep pocket to be the early adopters.

Singapore Government’s acquiring 2nd life’s land was certainly a good gesture to this industry. Though my hope is that the government could get more involved with regulating and directing companies like Twinity, who does not have a company vision of its own but merely “a neutral platform which provides everyone with a change to create anything.” That tagline sounds nice, until you realize the quality and the design of the experience could only come from a more focused goal like World of Warcraft from Blizzard.

That’s why I don’t foresee that these companies who are the sole platform providers for consumers could make money that soon. The problem we are solving now is that are we are NOT READY to pay for the things that could only exist on-line, and doesn’t give you much physical satisfaction as you do like eating meal. I think the most important thing for now is to simulate a unified experience throughout the platforms and locations. People don’t want to pay the same price for vastly different experience. It takes years to build an experience like in World of Warcraft.

Singapore government is betting on the future, and I wish her the all the best.

24: The Return of Windows Vista and Touchscreen

The action packed, technology advanced and attractive TV show 24 has finally arrived. I was the fan of the show since 4 years ago. And I am once again intrigued by the pictures this time. After a long delay because of writers’ strike last year and the recent burnt down of the 24 set in the Universal Studio LA, the first 4 episodes have finally arrived at the beginning of 2009.

I am a fan of technology, so I was constantly seeking what the new changes are from last seasons, let’s use some shots from Episode 1 and 2 to illustrate the point

1.A Large Touchscreen! It seems that after Apple has popularized multitouch with its iPhone and Jeff’s multitouch demo at TED, these touchy device starts to get very popular, even CNN were using them.

Touchscreen on TV Monitor

2.Dell. I can’t say if there are more dells visible in the scene, but those giant words definitely popped right at my eyes!

Dell Monitor

3.Apple Cinema Display, no more iMacs, no more. There are no more iMacs running some kinda of customized operating system (it might be purely VFX, who knows), instead, they have placed only Apple Cinema Display there to show the schematic.

Apple Cinema Display running Vista

4.Windows Vista Everywhere We can from nearly all the shots I captured here have some Vista imprint. Some are for sure windows vista operating system, some might be a vfx effect, but nevertheless, it might the cost of Microsoft Vista’s adversiting budget into this.

After Touched the Screen

Field Monitor - Vista on the right

You can watch the TV series through the Fox On Demand, if you know how.

Windows Live Space, the new social website in disguise?

I used to be a fan of Microsoft’s social networking website, whose name ironically I have forgotten. They have the interface like the following:

The Look of Microsoft's Social Networking Research Project

It was sort of like private network, where you could upload your music in full length to share with your close friends (i missed those times, badly),  and put your best photos as your background for people to enjoy. There was this element of connection in the picture. I mean visually, there is this connecting line in the picture you can see, and it changes as your click on other people “connected” to you.

In 2005, the research project came to a closure, or rather yanked because of running out of funds. I heard they built another website based on the same concept but on a different domain, which I had no access to to until today.

I could not remember if Microsoft Live Spaces has the option of opting out showing your content to non-explicitly added friends in the very beginning, but it eventually has the function of  blocking everyone but those selected few on your whitelist. The most recent discovery of mine on the topic is:

They allow your friends on your MSN messanger to have the access to your content only unless you want to share with the world

Wait a second, and think about what that means.

Table: Facebook and Spaces Difference

I am not sure if Microsoft is trying again to molopoly the social networking website, but they ARE catching up fast.

New Favicon From Google

I didn’t know there are 22 Chinese Detainee in Guantánamo.

From NY Times:

 

22 citizens of China have been held at Guantánamo

However, that does not come to me as a really shock , well, you’ll see the reason when you read the piece. From it I can realize why some of the organizations Chinese government is purging could survive.