Category: Thinking (Page 7 of 13)

Idea: Revamp Pinterest’s Comment Feature

January 17, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

[poll id=”9″]

If you aren’t really sure what Pinterest is, I’ll assume you are a male.

If you do know what it is and have spent any amount of time on it, you may have noticed the words that show up in the comments section underneath the photos of Stuff-Women-Fantasize-About-When-HGTV-Is-Not-On. On occasion, Pinterest users put these words together to form things that begin to approach sentences. My proposal is that we improve Pinterest by making it easier for them to choose a comment instead of having to type the same things out over and over.

***UPDATE***
Tizzle Van Dizzle has some Pinterest slogan suggestions.

What Will We Do With The 2%?

December 28, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

The 2% payroll tax holiday has been extended for a couple of months, and it will probably be extended for the rest of 2012. I’m guessing a lot of people don’t realize this 2% goes straight to Social Security–no other government spending is involved. Long term, that means Social Security isn’t going to be funded as planned. You can’t keep a pyramid scheme going ad infitum, but this may bring Social Security as we currently know it to an end sooner rather than later.

That may be a really good thing.

The longer people are taking the 2% home, the more difficult it’s going to be to convince them it needs to be withheld later. The longer people keep taking that 2% home, the more likely it is there will be some kind of Social Security reform deal cut to end the tax holday.

Here’s a possibility…

Bush 43 failed at convincing people that Social Security needed to be partially privatized. But how would people feel in 2013 if they were offered the option to save that 2% in a private account when withholding resumes? For those already saving responsibly for their own retirement, there wouldn’t be much resistance. They could break even by reducing their contribution to a qualified plan by the same 2% they’re going to be mandated to save. For those doing nothing currently on their own, they’ll be forced to take some ownership of their future instead of only relying solely on the current Social Security plan. Some may balk at that, but when you tell them they’re going to be taxed an extra 2% either way, they probably won’t complain much.

I’m guessing this would lead to some sort of means testing for Social Security, which we’re probably headed for anyway if we’re honest with ourselves. I’m betting I’ll never see Social Security either way, so I’d happily take the compromise of being guaranteed my 2% private account and having to give up the other 4.2% as a “safety net tax”. Well, “happily” may be a stretch, but 2% is better than getting none of the 6.2% I’ve had taken from me up to now.

Newt Gingrich as suggested something similar, but without the means testing. Instead, he’d guarantee current Social Security benefits as the floor.

Image credit

Two Big Features Google Plus Photos Still Doesn’t Have

December 20, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Google added some really nice touches to Plus Photos yesterday–pretty lightboxes, and better navigation for tagging and comments.

But there are a couple of problems I still have…

Photos and Picasa are basically the same thing now, but in order to manage my albums, I have to go over to Picasa and move/copy/delete. There isn’t any album management available in Plus anywhere. Kind of weird.

I’d also love to have stuff like red eye elimination available in Plus.

I know Google is releasing new features to Plus every day, but I don’t get why they haven’t included some very basic photo management and editing functionality yet.

It’s About The Children, Not The Farmers

December 1, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Proposed rule changes by the Labor Department may be bad for farmers, but they are worse for kids.

We never owned a farm when I was growing up, but I knew plenty of people who did. Having the opportunity to do farm work at a young age is one of the single biggest advantages I’ve had in life, second only to being as handsome as ten movie stars.

That was a joke.

First of all, it gave me the opportunity at an early age to learn about working to earn something. Most of the time I was paid by how much work I did, not how many hours I worked. The harder you worked or the more desired skills you possessed, the more you could earn. Example: suckering tobacco doesn’t pay nearly as much as cutting and spiking tobacco. I learned the lesson my first year of working tobacco for a family friend. I showed up the next year anxious to cut.

Secondly, I learned the difference between “working” and “working hard”. I learned this mostly from my Uncle Fred. My dad (he was actually my dad’s uncle) had already told me that this old man could outwork anybody he knew, and he lived up to his reputation the first day he hired me on. Lucky for me the other two guys working with us were grown men with a knack for laziness. I could easily outpace them, so he wasn’t too hard on me. But I did get to hear his opinion of people like them while we were waiting on them to finish their work, and I knew I didn’t want anyone to talk about me that way if I could help it.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Working hard at an early age is good for the body, mind, and soul. If nothing else it can give kids the motivation to make the most of their education so they don’t have to spend their lives doing back-breaking labor. I’m talking about kids 11 and 12 years old and up here, not babies.

Why would anyone want to deny kids the right…yeah, I called it a right…to learn these lessons, earn their own money, and actually get outside and do something productive?

Let me put it on tougher terms–these are the kids you are going to be depending on to go out and hit it hard all day to pay your social security (or whatever sort of safety net exists at that point).

We are getting soft.

This is the part that really gets me:

Furthermore, most 14- and 15-year-old workers would be prevented from operating any tractor, all-terrain vehicle, milking machine, or lawn mower. Now, exemptions exist that allow them to operate such equipment given they complete a 24 hour safety course…

My safety course for driving a tractor consisted of “You know how to work a riding mower don’t you?”. It was sort of implied that if I wrecked my Uncle Fred’s tractor and survived, my safety would be in danger.

[Image Credit]

Comparison of Roth IRAs and Your Current Residence

November 15, 2011 / Scott / 1 Comment

Assumption: you bought your current residence as an investment with the intent of selling it for a profit at some point.

: Paper Street Soap Investment Property

Similarities

Both are purchased with after tax money
No capital gains taxes due when the gains are realized
Not taxable as income when the gains are realized
No guaranteed rate of appreciation

Differences

Roth IRA has a $5k/year limit on how much you can invest, but your home doesn’t
You can’t touch the gains of your Roth without penalty until you are 59.5, but you can get the gains from your residence whenever you choose without penalty
While you aren’t guaranteed appreciation in either vehicle, if your home has a mortgage you are guaranteed a percentage of interest savings by paying down (investing) the principal early. True, you lessen the tax deduction on the interest, but does it really make sense to pay the bank $100 so that you don’t have to pay the gov’ment $25 anyway?
Any improvement-type investments you make into your home (for instance, a foreclosure that needed a lot of work) can be enjoyed by you immediately while you wait for the market to appreciate and can also help you sell quickly and for a higher price later on.

What am I missing here? I’m not a financial professional…just something I was thinking.

[Image Credit]

PETA, Sea World, and Slavery

October 26, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

The fact that PETA is suing Sea World for enslaving orcas is ridiculous on so many levels.

These are killer whales. They lost all their constitutional rights when they violated the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of food of the seals and fish they devoured while they were in the wild.

I consider their imprisonment justice for their misdeeds. Doing flips and splashing me with their tails a few times a day beats the hell out of picking up trash on the beach. They should stop complaining and clogging up the courts with their frivolous lawsuits.

October 18, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Real quick…two articles in Mashable today that should give Facebook a clue:

Sean Parker (a FB shareholder) notes that Facebook’s power users are moving to Twitter and Google Plus

and

Users surveyed dislike Timeline.

What do these have in common? It’s the perception that users’ privacy is being chipped away too rapidly. For instance, I think Timeline is awsum! I want to look at my Timeline…what a great tool! It’s just that I want to be able to lock it down and only show it to a few people (or no one).

What if Facebook’s default position was to make all new features super-private in the beginning and give users a chance to adjust to them and open up themselves instead of forcing everything to be public and ratcheted down? They continually come at things from the wrong direction.

UPDATE

And teens will leave Facebook for Google+? I’ve said it before…they really screwed up by putting off that IPO.

Idea: Remove Limitations to Find Fitness Limits

October 11, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

This could be a long-ish post for me, but I’m going to try to keep it short and sweet. I’m done with my time in the Clydesdale division. It was fun, but it has really just held me back. The last race I ran I was struggling to keep my weight above 200 for the last few weeks of training. How much faster could I have gone if I’d let my self drop another 10 pounds?

Back when I was lifting weights regularly, it would have been tough to get to 199 and not be a little too little (I was 230 for my marathon PR). I was playing rugby for most of that time too, and I needed the bulk.

It’s not bulk anymore. Now it’s just fat. I’m about 218 right now, and could probably comfortably walk around at 185-190 if I got rid of all the, uh, bulk I currently have.

Ok…maybe I’ll lift just a little and shoot for 195. I mean, the only thing worse than being fat is being skinny.

“Occupy”. And Then What?

October 7, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Ok, so I have some questions about the whole “Occupy” movement. Not trying to be a jerk here, even though that will surely be the way it’s interpreted. There are just some things I don’t get about this movement. I don’t think what they are doing is wrong or a bad idea necessarily, I’m just not sure they are doing it for the right reasons or if they’ve thought about what would happen if they got what they’ve asked for.

If the minimum wage is raised to $20 (demand one), all the people currently making $10-$19.99/hour will get a raise to $20/hour, but definitely no higher than that. They’ll only be making minimum wage. Because the increased cost of labor will cause the retail cost of pretty much everything to increase, isn’t this effectively giving those currently in the $10-$19.99/hour range a pay cut? Doesn’t this really hurt the middle class instead of helping them? Or is step 2 an introduction of price controls? Careful what you ask for there.
If you put pressure on a political party (probably the Democrats) to nominate anti-capitalist candidates, what do you expect to be the end result at the end of election night? Will those folks receive “the other 99%” of the vote?
One of the major talking points seems to be a disagreement with the 2008-2009 bailouts. Another major talking point seems to be that “Occupy” is an answer to the Tea Party. But aren’t the bailouts a major issue both groups agree on?
Free college (demand four)? Ok…but by doing that you’ve basically ensured everyone will go, which waters down your liberal arts degree even further. Or do you still want entrance standards? If so, won’t this be giving things to people based solely on their intelligence? And people will have to compete for these funds–who will set the standards and entrance exams? Isn’t this knowledge rationing? And look out…those professors and administrators who planted some of these ideas in your head may not be to happy about working for less (or for free).
Wipe out all debt (demand 11)? Ok, now you guys are just ripping off Fight Club. Of course, we never got to see the result of this effort. I am Jack’s longing for a sequel.

I’ll happily argue about this, but really I’m just looking for some clear answers. The impression I’m getting so far is that many of these folks are no different than some people who identify as Tea Partiers who are in favor of saving Social Security/Medicare and continuing/expanding war spending. You know…people who haven’t really taken their stated positions to their logical end.

The Great Facebook Compromise

October 4, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ve been going back and forth for a while on what should be done about Facebook in my particular case. It would be kind of nice to eliminate it completely since I don’t ever post there, but there are some work-related advantages to being there that I just can’t deny.

Oh, and I also need a FB account to use Spotify.

My first thought was to go to an extreme and un-friend every single person on there. I even started doing that (sorry if you got axed…I made it to the letter ‘C’). The logic was that I’m easy enough to find on the web in other places if you really want to find me, but the problem is that other people aren’t. The simple fact is that I do have some great friends who have a presence on Facebook and nowhere else, and I like to keep up with them and occasionally comment.

Then I remembered reading somewhere that a person can only really have 150 friends–the Dunbar number. That gave me the idea of shrinking my list down to 150 Facebook friends as a maximum. But that required some rules. So here’s my strategy…

If I just kinda knew you but have no funny stories about you, you’re out
If I only know you through other social media (blogs, Plus, Twitter), you’re out…we communicate in those places and not Facebook.
If I only know you because the person you are married to or dating, you’re out. Think of it this way…who would get me in the divorce?
If you are close family that I regularly talk to on the phone and in person instead of online, you’re out. We already have an established means of communication, and it’s not Facebook.
If you are other family and we don’t talk even though we’re Facebook friends, you’re out. (I post photos of the family here, and I would love to share with you!)
If you don’t actively participate on Facebook anyway, you’re out (and good for you!)
If you are married to me, you’re in. Always.
If we were once really close but aren’t any longer because of time and distance, and Facebook is the only way we can stay connected, you’re in. But I’m going to try to get you to move to Plus.
If someone who trumps you tries to add me as a friend later, you may get the boot. Sorry. 150 is the limit.

Some of these rules may seem harsh, especially the family stuff, but since I don’t share on Facebook, I figure no harm done. And it also clears up a few spots for friends. So we’re pretty much down to people who I really liked in high school and college, people who have sweated and bled with me on the rugby pitch, and chicks who are good kissers.

Sorry Facebook–MySpace Had It Right From The Beginning

September 26, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

– Demosthenes

Last week I wrote a post that stated Facebook had no long-term direction. Boy was I wrong. The F8 keynote address made it obvious that they have a very clear vision…they want to know everything about everything you do.

They want to seamlessly allow you to share your entire life with your friends. No effort required on your part. Just install the right apps to your Facebook account, and you can share everything you do real time, while also automatically curating the details of your life for later in Timeline.

Technologically, that’s amazingly cool, but it potentially introduces a huge problem. Real time, seamless information about you being streamed to all of your “friends” means it’s hard to filter anything. Since Facebook is so proud of it’s integration with Spotify to share what music you are listening to, let’s use that as an example.

While Facebook is right that people love to share music with their friends, they’ve neglected to realize that people also love to listen to a lot of music that they don’t want to share with their friends. Do you really want your friends to know that you love that Milli Vanilli song and listen to it first thing every morning? Don’t we all have music that isn’t at all cool, but we love to listen to?

Now…think about that exact situation applied to all the other things Facebook wants to know about you: books, movies, websites, food, (lack of) exercise, etc. Now…think about what it will mean when all of these things are lumped together. I’ll save you the suspense and cut to the chase:

Facebook is slowly but surely taking away its users’ ability to present themselves as they wish to be seen. Instead, Facebook is going to force people to be seen exactly as they are.

Take that in for just a second. The real you is going to be out there for everyone to see. Not the version you’d like to present to people.

The real you.

Now is the time in this post when we’re all going to have to be painfully honest with ourselves. Or if we don’t want to examine ourselves, let’s just consider other people we know.

Doesn’t it seem like a lot of your “friends” who are active Facebook users really just see it as the reality show they will never be cast for?

And doesn’t it seem like many of them are crafting an online versions of themselves you know isn’t 100% accurate (just like people on reality shows)?

Don’t you sometimes wonder if these people even realize that they are misrepresenting themselves?

And when you consider the ones you know really well in real life, doesn’t it seem like the only people they are really fooling about these imaginary fabulous lives are themselves and people who don’t really know them?

What’s going to happen when these uber-active users realize they are no longer able to fool other people about their real selves and are also unable to continue to fool themselves?

What happens when Facebook becomes a reflection of real life instead of a collection of beautiful self-portraits created by master artists? What happens when that mirror of their real lives is held up to Facebook’s users’ faces?

That’s not going to be a completely scary thing for most people, but the fact that it’s being shared with everyone else and that it can’t be turned off will be. Are they going to continue to be so active on Facebook, or are they going to dramatically cut back?

Personally, I’m a big fan of the ability to present yourself as you choose online. It’s why I blog under a domain name that is my name. I control it. It’s why I seldom use curse words on Twitter. I control it. It’s why I’m thankful every person I encountered in my 20s didn’t have a digital camera and a platform to broadcast my behavior to the world.

It’s the reason I basically eliminated my participation on Facebook a while back.

I’m not being critical of people who work hard on Facebook to control their online personas. I know why they do that. I get it. I just don’t think they realize that’s exactly what they are doing; and I don’t think they (or Facebook) realize what’s going to happen when the ability to control that is completely removed.

MySpace did a lot of things wrong, but there’s one thing MySpace got right.

MySpace was about me. On MySpace, we could pretend to like only the coolest music by featuring only the coolest music on our profiles. We could pretend to be way better looking than we really are by sharing only the most flattering photos of ourselves. We could pretend to be popular by becoming friends with people we had no interest in knowing and boost our friend count.

MySpace let us all be fabulous. Or gangsta, intelligent, athletic…whatever we wish we really were.

Facebook is about to take all of that away. And the better they get at representing the real world, the more their users are going to have their images of themselves shattered.

Mark Zuckerberg may have made a very critical mistake when he failed to realize that everyone in the world isn’t a billionaire at 26 with hot chicks and cool friends clamoring to hang out with them, even if that’s what we all secretly wish our lives were like.

Plus and Facebook Both Jumping

September 21, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Every day I read something about how lame Google Plus is because no one is using it. That’s not the impression I’m getting. I see it being used a lot, although mostly by people who presumably can’t stand Facebook.

But that’s not an insignificant number of people.

And yesterday Google announced that Plus is now publicly available (no invite needed) and unleashed a plethora of new features. Facebook has been launching new stuff rapidly lately too, which pretty much indicates that they’re worried about Plus. Don’t believe that? Take note of the way they’re now automatically organizing your friends into ~~Circles~~ lists for you. Yesterday they made some major UI changes with the change to the news feed and the ticker.

When I was a more frequent Facebook user, I was very amused by the complaints from users when Facebook made small UI changes. It’s going to be worth visiting in the next few days to read what will best described as outrage over the mess they’ve created with these changes. This week’s analogy:

Netflix is to name change as Facebook is to UI change

We’ll see, but this misstep could make Plus even more viable. Robert Scoble is betting everything on Plus. And I’m becoming more and more convinced that Google has the best shot at winning the long game. Facebook has lots of users, but it completely lacks anything resembling organization and long term direction.

Data likes to be organized, and users like simple things that don’t change much.

Correct Swimming Pool Temps

September 9, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’m going to break this down to levels beyond scientific, based on my test data.

I’m proposing a “bust-yer-aise” scale similar to the wind chill factor or the heat index. 80 feels like 88, provided you’re working hard enough.

If 80 degree water in your backyard pool is too cold for you to cool off in, you need to increase the intensity of your run/bike/walk/row/rugby/training. Or mow/landscape harder. Whatever.

And the max temperature for a lap pool should be ~78. If you can’t make yourself sweat buckets in 78 degree water, consult a physician.

September 8, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Watching the debates last night, I noticed that other candidates have started to talk about things like auditing the federal reserve and using terms like “Keynesian economics”.

Good job Ron Paul. You started those conversations four years ago and have shifted the debate in some very key areas this time around.

However, I don’t think they are going to be talking about “the fence that keeps us all in” during the 2016 campaign. I’m afraid you may be losing it us a little on that front.

Thinking my money would be better spent this time around helping Newt stir the pot.

Lucrative Twitter Niche Identified!!!

September 6, 2011 / Scott / 0 Comments

Twitter is still growing every day, and it’s harder and harder to get noticed and recognized there. No matter what niche you are trying to target with your marketing efforts, it seems like it’s more difficult to build a following among anyone other than the people who are also marketing in that niche.

I was looking over my “New Followers” emails over the weekend and checking out the profiles of some of the people who looked like they may have a motive for using Twitter other than selling me something. There weren’t many to be found. But I did find a new niche. It was serendipitous!

The untapped niche on Twitter is…

People who are just being themselves and not pushing a sales pitch until I want to vomit at the thought of the idea of owning whatever they are selling.

If you are moderately interesting, I’m going to be much more likely to pay attention to what you are trying to sell me when you finally, after gaining my trust, try to sell it. I’m a tightwad, so I won’t pay that much attention, but at least I’ll pay more attention.

If you are really into fitness (or web applications, or politics, or music, or fill_in_the_blank), that’s awesome. Me too. But I don’t want to hear someone talk about one single subject all the time in real life. Why would I want that on Twitter? If you can’t talk about anything else over a cup of coffee, you are probably obnoxious and boring.

And so is your Twitter account.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

– Demosthenes

Gettin’ After It!