April 2013

There were 59 posts published in April 2013 (this is page 1 of 6).

To be conservative, If we give CNN a very high market penetration, like 50%, then we can estimate that the entire Google Reader ecosystem is roughly 50 million users. This is backed up by the claim that in 2010 Google reader had, “tens of millions of monthly active users.” Second, I estimate that Reader is 80% of the total market for this type of RSS reader, which would put the total market at roughly 65 million users.

So about 65 million people are reading the news using RSS feed readers? 

That’s a lot. And a good news. 

How Large Will the Paid Feed Reader Market Be?

Why we stand where we do in elevators

Why we stand where we do in elevators

“More senior men in particular seemed to direct themselves towards the back of the elevator cabins,” she writes in a blog for Ethnography Matters. “In front of them were younger men, and in front of them were women of all ages.”

There was also a difference in where people directed their gaze mid-ride: “Men watched the monitors, looked in the side mirrors (in one building) to see themselves, and in the door mirrors (of the other building) to also watch others. Women would watch the monitors and avoid eye contact with other users (unless in conversation) and the mirrors.”

In other words, men would check everyone else (and themselves) out during their elevator ride. Women, on the other hand, would only look in the mirrors when they were with other women.

Surely this can’t be the natural way we organise ourselves in elevators. The experiment was conducted in the tallest office buildings of Adelaide in Australia so power relations and hierarchies must come in to play. 

The Price of Wine

The Price of Wine

parislemon:

While not quite as bad as diamonds, a lot of what goes into wine pricing seems to be largely bullshit as well:

Numerous experiments have shown that people will enjoy a table wine and a fine wine equally if they believe that they are both fine wine. Knowing that a wine is supposed to be good does literally make it taste better. The drinkers could be lying about enjoying the “bad” wine due to social pressure. However, an experiment involving a Stanford wine tasting group, a group of identical wines presented under fake price tags from $5 to $90, and a fMRI machine measuring activity in areas of the brain correlated with pleasure suggests otherwise. Drinking the same wine with a higher price tag did increase pleasure.

Also, this is a great quote:

As of 2003, Bronco processed 300,000 tons of grapes to make 20 million cases of wine, of which a quarter are Charles Shaw wines. Asked how he sells wine for the same price as a bottle of water, Franzia responded, ““They’re overcharging for the water. Don’t you get it?”

Fascinating. 

Even Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein called for “some redistribution” to create a stable and just society. But despite the growing consensus in Washington, Wall Street and academia, there hasn’t yet been concrete action and the situation is only taking a turn for the worse.

The US has the highest level of income gap of any of the advanced countries, with the top 1% capturing over 90% of the income growth.

Some politics to do for your Mr. Obama.

In the US everyone’s talking about income inequality, but nobody’s really doing anything about it

Why you should move that button 3px to the left

Why you should move that button 3px to the left

Great insights by Braden Kowitz on Medium about the difference between good design and great design. One would be functional, the other would be delightful. 

Obsessing over the details would allow for more trust from customers and a better overall usability (good examples as well). 

When we’re happy, using an interface feels like play. The world looks like a puzzle, not a battle. So when we get confused, we’re more likely to explore and find other paths to success. There’s a whole book on this topic: Emotional Design by Don Norman. But here’s the important bit: Getting design details right can create positive emotional states that actually make products easier to use.

Getting the details right would thus create a beneficial loop and make the product easier to use. 

What people download in North Korea.

Monitoring tools, How I Met Your Mother and OS X Mountain Lion (along with porn and Life of Pi, follow the source link for more information).