What does "Cognited" mean?


Cognited is the instance when cognition is ignited by an input. Burn baby burn.



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Finding Time and Yoga/Pilates

In a class this quarter taught by Andrew Nelson I read an interesting book, “Finding Time” by Leslie Perlow. The book discusses the impact of technology and the new economy on work/life balance. This year for the first time I enrolled in Yoga/Pilates for 2 reasons.
Reason 1: I have a bad back and I heard from multiple credible sources that this would strengthen and stretch my back muscles. This turned out to be dead on and my back hasn’t felt so good in a long time.
Reason 2: I am so consumed by technology/work, and I rarely have anything to keep me away from all my information flows.

Thanks to my trusty iPhone, I have access to all 7 of my email accounts as long as I’m awake, whether I’m at my computer or not. Google Alerts keeps me hooked into all relevant news articles that contain keywords I specify. Pageflakes provides me with a 1-stop-shop to read all of my online news. The list goes on and on. I find myself working in some way, shape, or form as long as I am awake. Furthermore, I see sleep as a necessity that is simply a detriment to my productivity.

What creates this mentality? Leslie Petrow argues that its our socio-economic system that rewards endless work, rather than balance and productivity. Deep down I believe this to be true. I truly feel that downtime allows for more engaged work and improved productivity, but within society one is pressured to always be working and showing ones dedication to their job.

This quarter, I decided to add an activity to my life that does not rely on technology to give me at least one hour every 2 days to relax and refocus. Unfortunately, I let my work get the best of me and missed more of my yoga/pilates fusion classes than expected.

Nevertheless, the classes I did attend left me feeling relaxed, invigorated, and motivated. I was also happily surprised to notice that my back has never felt so good. I almost got suckered into an expensive chiropractic treatment process, but I’m fairly certain that continuing these classes will suffice as a treatment for my back. I would definitely recommend yoga/pilates to anyone looking for an activity to assist with relaxation, strength, flexibility, or all of the above.



Facebook News Feed or News Feast?

One of the things recently talked about in our Facebook class is the news feed. The consensus was that its an Ace in the hole for Facebook. I’m not going to argue with that, but how much is too much? Sure, I’m glad that Facebook gives you the ability to control what shows up where on mini feeds and news feeds, but I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed with all this “control.”

One of Facebook’s strengths (atleast in my mind) is the UI. Its clean, simple and attractive. reading the information relativ to your network is easy and the format is great. Now I feel like I have to defend myself from so much information so I can still make out the important stuff.

With the news feed being opened to Apps, and now the feature Project Beacon which includes products your friends have purchased from partner sites in your feed, The clean interface might be a thing of yesteryear.

Could Microsoft be rubbing off on Facebook already? Check this video out to see the a possible evolution of Facebook. Replace “iPod” with “Facebook”



Respect Facebook Apps…

I’m fully aware of all the lame apps around, but creating a good app is a lot of work. My entire team definitely underestimated the amount of time required to develop an app that is useful to users. Our app is aimed at the car enthusiast community, therefore we’ve performed some “field” research to get feedback on what kind of features they would find useful. Obviously, we had our own ideas previous to the research, but the feedback was great. We got a lot of awesome suggestions(along with some entertaining ones). If you are developing an app for a specific community, I highly recommend speaking directly with people who will likely be using your app to get great ideas. Obviously, user comments on the app are effective, but it is definitely a different type of feedback than feedback “in the wild,” or sites where your users congregate en masse.



WordPress Database Explosion

Despite my love for WordPress, I am apparently not immune to technological misfortunte. The WordPress database exploded 3 weeks ago, and school has been so intense that I haven’t had a chance to debug it. Its up and running and in good shape now. Activity will resume, and an update on our Facebook app is due tomorrow. Stay tuned.



The Stanford Facebook Class

This year Stanford is offering a class for designing, developing, and implementing Facebook Apps. As far as I know, this is the first class offered on this subject. I’ve decided to take on the other members of my team in this class as authors for this blog. We’ll be posting our experiences and anything that has to do with Facebook Apps related to our experience.



Is Channel Surfing Dead?

I could be jumping the gun here, but I cant remember the last time I channel surfed. I’m sure part of this has to do with a simple lack of time. However, I do find the time to watch some TV. In fact, I’m watching Heroes as I type this (great show by the way). Only, I’m watching it through my Xbox 360 Media Center via Amazon Unbox. All of the TV I watch is On-Demand. Our web desiger at work doesn’t have cable. He just purchased a brand new HDTV, but has no plans on buying cable. For the first time in my life, that doesn’t seem so unreasonable. I actually considered doing the same thing. I get all my news from the internet(http://www.pageflakes.com/warren.colbert) and podcasts. Between all the Movie Download services, DVD renting services like Netflix and Blockbuster, and the IPTV services on the rise (Joost), channel surfing may just be on its way out.



iPhone unlocked, so what?

The Jesus phone strikes again. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone(no really, I do), and I do think there are lots of T-Mobile users out there liquidating their equity portfolios as I type this, but is this a major blow to AT&T? Doubtful. This is more of a bonus for Apple than a blow to AT&T. A huge chunk of phone users out there that want the iPhone bad enough to leave T-Mobile, have already left. Those waiting for their contract to end are clearly not dying for the iPhone, or they would have found one of the many ways to get out of their contract, like playing dead as shown on iPhoneMatters.com:

“Verizon Wireless: Hello, can you give me your full name and the phone number on the account?
Me: Sure. My name is Gregory Ng and my number is ***-***-****
Verizon Wireless: Thank you Mr. Ng, can I have the last 4 digits of your social security number for verification purposes?
Me: XXXX
Verizon Wireless: Thank you. What can I do for you today?
Me: I have a question. If I die, will I still be charged an early termination fee?
Verizon Wireless: No sir.
Me: If I die, will you ask for a death certificate to prove I’m dead?
Verizon Wireless: Sir, are you planning on pretending to die to get out of the early termination fee?
Me: Thanks for the info. Goodbye.
“

Ok, so we can see that AT&T has already enlisted all of the tMobile customers that didn’t care about the ETF(early termination fee), Nicollo Machiavelli wannabes, and other creative individuals out there using various other techniques to dodge that ETF. Who’s left? The technophiles that read TechCrunch and Engadget salivating over every iPhone article published. AT&T, it’ll be OK.



Spring cleaning at Intel

Intel, the reigning champ in the processor business announced that it will be cutting 1000 jobs in Mexico as a result to eliminate obsolete 200mm wafer production. It truly seems as though the sleeping giant is in fact a wake. AMD’s party is over and Intel is coming down from all sides. In the last year, Intel’s product line has seen improvements in all dimensions. Cooler, faster, cheaper than AMD’s processors, Intel’s offerings continue to eat into the market share gains enjoyed by AMD just 1 year ago. This job cut emphasizes Intel’s reluctance to relax and enjoy its lead over its rival. My hat goes off to Intel for providing healthy severance packages and encouraging the employees to apply in other areas of Intel.

Read more here.



NewsVine relaunches today

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t already have 15 different methods to streamline my news reading process. In fact, its beginning to truly exploit my information addiction. Nevertheless, Newsvine is my new favorite hook. The website design is clean, attractive, and intuitive. The makings of a good homepage. As it is with most Web 2.0 sites, the site is simply a conduit for user provided content. Thus, profits are directly linked to the eyeballs attracted in the form of advertising revenues. A rather unique feature of the Newsvines business model is that its users are shown gratitude for their editorial time spent on the site by earning a percentage of the advertising revenues earned from their columns. Despite the simplistic nature of news aggregation, the quest for the most efficient and attractive method for news delivery continues one more formidable challenger.


read more | digg story



CEO Of Rivals Committed Fraud; May Kill Yahoo Acquisition

Rumors about a possible $100 million acquisition by Yahoo of sports content site Rivals surfaced today. But two previous deals to acquire the company died once it was discovered that the CEO, Shannon Terry, was found to have violated the anti-touting and antifraud provisions of U.S. securities laws in 1998.

Last week after reading Necromancer by William Gibson, I was lectured on the homogenization of the personal identity due to the digitization of human life. It was proposed by my prof, Fred Turner, that the interconnecting nature of the digital lifestyle gradually strips away the individual by making one dependent on the collective we call the net. We are effectively always “plugged in.” What does this have to do with the Bad Boys over at Rivals? Nothing in the slightest, but its nice to know that amidst the downward spiral orientation of society, there are still bandits at the helm of society committing old school crimes. As long as there are bank robbers, how different can society really get? Right?

read more | digg story