analysis

[analysis]

Most popular and least popular birth months in each state from 1998-2004. State of birth occurance is used. I'm thinking of running it again with state of residence of mother.

[analysis]

2004 US Births Analysis by State and Month of Birth

Month    # States Above Mean Births 1    0 2    29 3    22 4    21 5    19 6    43 7    48 8    32 9    46 10    23 11    17 12    18

Month    # States Below Mean Births 1    51 2    22 3    29 4    30 5    32 6    8 7    3 8    19 9    5 10    28 11    34 12    33

State,Most Births,Mean Daily Births in Month of Most Births Divided by Mean Daily Births in Year,Fewest Births,Mean Daily Births in Month of Fewest Births Divided by Mean Daily Births in Year AK,03: March,7.3%,05: May,-0.5% AL,12: December,4.4%,02: February,-2.3% AR,09: September,7.7%,03: March,-0.7% AZ,08: August,3.2%,01: Januaray,-4.8% CA,08: August,3.6%,12: December,-1.1% CO,07: July,4.8%,03: March,-0.5% CT,06: June,7%,02: February,-0.4% DC,06: June,4.9%,02: February,-0.1% DE,02: February,7.3%,06: June,-0.9% FL,09: September,8.4%,04: April,-3% GA,08: August,2%,04: April,-2.9% HI,09: September,9.9%,04: April,-1.6% IA,02: February,5.8%,11: October,-0.7% ID,06: June,4.9%,08: August,-0.3% IL,02: February,1.3%,11: October,-2.5% IN,03: March,2%,05: May,-0.3% KS,09: September,4.9%,02: February,-0.5% KY,07: July,4.9%,03: March,-0.4% LA,12: December,3.8%,01: Januaray,-1.3% MA,08: August,3.9%,03: March,-0.2% MD,02: February,2.1%,03: March,-0.4% ME,06: June,10.3%,12: December,-0.5% MI,06: June,2.8%,10: November,-3.1% MN,06: June,3%,11: October,-2.8% MO,06: June,4.5%,03: March,-0.2% MS,11: October,5%,06: June,-0.1% MT,07: July,9.7%,10: November,-1.3% NC,11: October,2.4%,12: December,-0.6% ND,06: June,7.6%,08: August,-0.9% NE,07: July,6.5%,11: October,-0.4% NH,05: May,7.4%,08: August,-0.8% NJ,08: August,3.2%,03: March,-0.2% NM,09: September,8.8%,02: February,-0.5% NV,09: September,7.7%,03: March,-1.8% NY,03: March,0.9%,04: April,-0.1% OH,02: February,2.4%,12: December,-2.6% OK,09: September,5.2%,03: March,-0.3% OR,06: June,4.6%,03: March,-0.1% PA,08: August,2.4%,04: April,-0.2% RI,06: June,6.7%,09: September,-1.1% SC,12: December,6.4%,03: March,0% SD,09: September,5.1%,04: April,-1.7% TN,12: December,3.6%,02: February,-0.6% TX,09: September,9%,02: February,-2.6% UT,08: August,3.7%,12: December,-7.5% VA,06: June,6.3%,08: August,-0.2% VT,04: April,11.3%,07: July,-0.5% WA,07: July,4.5%,02: February,-0.2% WI,06: June,4.5%,05: May,-0.3% WV,09: September,9.9%,10: November,-0.1% WY,04: April,10.2%,06: June,-1.1%

[analysis]

Berkeley Digital Media >Play Conference

Keynote - Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

As a startup, you should be using what you're developing.

"Without realtime, you're going to be left behind." With realtime communication, a flock of bids move around an obstacle; Now available to humans via Twitter as seen at SXSW. Shared events, people want to communicate in realtime.

Earthquakes - Twitter has disrupted the 100+ year old AP wire service.

NASA now pushing out information at real time rather than previously a couple week old. [Thoughts: What does this mean? Will data be misinterpreted? Will we be better off with more people giving their opinion? Will we care less a couple weeks later when NASA has evaluated the results of their data and it's no longer new.]

Moderator: Extracting insight from experience?

Biz Stone: Dell sold $500,000 worth of computers on Twitter before they were even listed on their website. Iterate and build. Also, we [Twitter] want to live forever.

Biz Stone: I like things that reflect back to natural ecosystems.

Panel – Creativity for Everyone!

Lorne Lanning: Ability to focus in the U.S. is being disrupted. Today, we're seeing a lot of innovative content coming from around the world where there aren't as many distractions fighting for attention. They have a completely different leisure schedule outside the U.S.

Scott Belsky: Quality may become marginalized if jobs are a competition with many people producing artwork and only one being accepted and paid.

Lorne Lanning: Art movements throughout history used to be localized like in Paris or Manhattan. Today, it's globalized where a a piece of art produced in El Salvador may get feedback from someone in L.A.. The world is mediocre. We need people to strive for excellence. It will be easier for those people to standout today in a a world of mediocrity. Iterations result in a better end result.

Yair Landau: "Rewards for excellence on the high end are continuing to grow..." There is less tolerance for mediocrity in a global world, with more competition.

Scott Belsky: "People are lazy and want to find really good stuff quickly and easily."

Consumption of art is increasing.

Shanan Delp: Artists often don't know what consumers are going to enjoy the most.

Moderator (Lydia Varmazis): Artwork is now being published in some cases before it is even finished, which is allowing people to more easily copy ideas of others. What is the impact of this?

...

Lorne Lanning: eLance

Scott Belsky: Behance

Keynote - Shane Kim, VP Interactive Media Microsoft

Audience Member: When will full game digital download sales surpass brick & mortar / packaged good sales?

Shane Kim: Downloads are the future.

Shane Kim: Xbox360 & PS3 should have longer lives than prior consoles because the investment required to create a new console is hard to justify with less of a graphical improvement.

Panel – Brands that Break Through

Moderator (Scott Parent): Who's leading the shift? (Panel is reluctant to answer.) Doug Chavez: all of them. Mike Parker: I would disagree a bit. Marketers follow consumers. Content creators also leading charge for consumers. Lisa: PR often used to come from companies, now often from bloggers. Laura Schuler: "Can be seductive to jump on the bandwagon." (ex: for marketers to get on facebook) ... Mike Parker: How can you market without completely taking the viewers attention away from the web page. Laura Schuler: Response rates are so low. If you're on facebook, you're there because that's where you want to be. How do you market without harming user experience? ...

Doug Chavez: "Test and iterate."

------------------------------------------------ The above are my notes from the 2008 >Play Conference and not exactly what was said and significant portions are missing.

[analysis]

Avoid criticism, do nothing.

Local at Starbucks

[analysis]

Work in Progress (WIP): Misinformation on the internet

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google is quoted as having said, "Brands are the solution, not the problem... Brands are how you sort out the cesspool," while speaking to a group of magazine executives last month.1 Initially I heard this via Evan Williams' tweet: "Eric Schmidt: The Internet is becoming a cesspool,2" and thought Schmidt was referring to the massive number of junk websites that appear in Google's search results and as well the number of times a piece of information can be seen replicated across the internet with no new additional information added, ex3. However, it now appears he was speaking to magazine executives encouraging them to retain the integrity of their brands despite these trends.

In response to Ev's tweet, I thought Google was in no position to tell us essentially their job is hard and we should accept their mediocre search because there is no better alternative and the cost to create viable competition is considerable... I thought, yes there is a lot of junk out there and nothing much we can do about it other than ignore it. However, I later thought, there is misinformation everywhere in our daily lives, ie. conversations, yet it has more recently become easy to publish this misinformation. It became clear to me that there has always been misinformation and we are just now beginning to see how much there really is in our daily lives.

What role can the internet play? Certainly technology and artificial intelligence (AI) will one day be able to identify and correct some misinformation as close to its source as possible. However, that would require AI knowing fact from misinformation. It also could never prevent misinformation from being published entirely as AI may take information out of context. But more to the point, what AI accepts as fact would hopefully be widely up to debate by the public. How do we get to that point? The point where the most reputable members of the public ensure misinformation is not being published by those who most wish not to publish it? Or how might we ensure Wikipedia has complete accuracy? It disappoints me when sitting in class I am told by teachers that Wikipedia is not a reliable source because members of the school's faculty have found inaccuracies in Wikipedia and I am lead to believe the faculty member(s) let these inaccuracies remain in Wikipedia.

Clearly the first step is the responsibility of authors to publish more accurate information and fact check as much as possible before publishing. Yet, perhaps it is more important to click publish and see what feedback is returned by the public? Perhaps my next post will be on how passive society has become of misinformation and to refrain from criticism and confrontation. In the meantime, take it easy.

1http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/google-ceo-call.html 2http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/950234767 3http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%22Eric+Schmidt%22+cesspool

[analysis]

Effective advertising techniques as determined by a college writing class

- humor - exaggeration - tugging on heartstrings - statistics - music - timely [ex: during election] - patriotic - animals - shock value [ex: guy w/ pig head] - jingles/slogans - passage of time [ex: puppy to dog] - people want to open things like a present [ex: magazine perfume inserts] - get to the point quickly & explain it well; avoid confusion/frustration - "average Joe" / celebrity - informative - straight talk [ex: Barack Obama] - likeable figure [ex: Orland Jones: Make 7 up yours] - slogan that can be easily recognized/connected with product [ex: 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance] - targeted for a specific audience Notable Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s46R4afqRRI

[analysis]

Short squeeze in Volkswagen! Up 121% today! Disclosure: I own 1 share.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=ahoqvEM6tD0U&refer=home

[analysis]

"I'm not claiming that I'm going to develop a MySpace killer (I don't have time to attempt it). My point is that when you embrace mediocrity, it might be hard to imagine greatness in its place. When you destroy mediocrity, you leave a void which would be preposterous not to fill with something better."

Jakob Lodwick

[analysis]

"One who forms a judgment on any point but cannot explain himself clearly might as well never have thought at all on the subject."

Pericles