Sometimes It's Easy: Physics Nobel Prize 1965

Sometimes It's Easy: Physics Nobel Prize 1965

So I got this new attitude. ... I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate - two to one [Note: Feynman mis-remembers here---the factor of 2 is the other way]. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, ``Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it's two to one?'' ...

 I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ``playing'' - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things. It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. ...

The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

From a page of this site : Ohio State University

CANDOPI.com always and gladly encourages such serious play ! ;-)

Simple, Cheap and Durable: Innovation at the Fringe

An inspiring example from Bloomberg Businessweek, June 13-26:

When your resources are seriously constrained, when you are this close to your customers, value-creation becomes almost inevitable.

Tinkerers also have their own advantages.
See Palmer Luckey and his invention, Oculus.
See James Dyson and his invention, stylish vacuum cleaners.
See Honda and his invention, CVCC engine.

CANDOPI.com urges everyone, no matter how humble or lowly  to innovate their way out of any crisis, challenge or adversity. Good luck!

Hype, Skepticism : Innovator's Method

We should treat hype with a strong dose of skepticism. A great and modern example from Innovator's Method is here:

What would you do if 60-90% of what you read are either irrelevant or wrong? Filtering out the fluff, the chaff has become a serious skill in these days, especially high-tech fields.

One at a time? All at once? Vary Your Approach --2

Do A, then B, then C and then mix them up.

Or let A, B and C happen all at once.

Both! Variation is the answer sometimes.

We have talked about a similar example before on this blog.

How to create value for powerful customers these days

Consumers are getting more and more powerful.

And the economy is the value-creation kind.

How do we cope?

Involve your employees the right way.








Happy people will make other people happy too ;-)

One at a time? All at once? Vary Your Approach

Identifying faces in a crowd is time-consuming. With terrorist violence on the rise, law enforcement agencies need technology's assistance.

Here is an innovative solution. Previously, AI algorithms, especially decision-tree-based ones, handle one decision at a time: One at a time.

This new approach handles all decisions all at once at the end. Varying their approach like this has done good to the designer of the algorithm.

Caveman Hardcore Inventing

"Hardcore Inventing" written by Robert Yonover, the inventor of RescueStreamer now deployed in all navies and air forces of the world, contains extremely inspiring ideas for entrepreneurial innovators.

After Peter Drucker's "Innovation and Entrepreneurship," we all know entrepreneurial innovation must be "simple".

How simple?

According to the authors, it should be ape-level, caveman-level simple.

In their primitive conditions, our primitive ancestors innovated "quickly" as their survival depended on it. They used only "materials at hand" and scavenge these resources by "carefully observ[ing] [their] surroundings".

Sometimes sales are inevitable

Sometimes sales are inevitable.

In an old HBR magazine, I read about Kiva and its disruptive logistic robots. The technology was good but the price tag was high and they finally had to give away a free trial worth of $ 38 millions.

In the same vein, the story of the University of Phoenix revealed that American schools showed interest in change, in new technology, or in new business models only when they are about to be bankrupt!

On such times, Sun Tzu predicted thousands of years ago that sales are inevitable.

Let us each prepare for that.

Cheer up. You are either talented or inventive!

We all should cheer up because we are either talented or inventive.

If talented, then you can copy and clone the past and present successes and prosper.

If you lack that talent, then whatever you make will be a bit different, a bit unique. In other words, you are original and inventive!

You can be both, but you cannot be neither. Isn't it a bit cheerful thought?

Innovation, Arts and Singapore, Sarah Lewis

Sarah Lewis points out why and how art is important to innovation in MIT Technology Review, of May/June 2014 issue.

What the arts allow us to do is to develop the muscle required for discernment, and also strengthen our sense of agency to determine for ourselves how we're going to tackle a given problem.

In my paraphrase and in elaboration (with me adding a bit) :

1. Arts develop discernment muscles.
2. Arts strengthen initiative, independence and tolerance of ambiguity.  
3. Arts help you learn to stay "hopeful" even when you feel "helpless".

These days, countries  talk a lot about "soft skills," "liberal arts,", "innovation," "high value add," "going higher up on value chain," etc. Many (including Singapore) even include Literature in their school curriculum.

May they be able to go

beyond Metaphor and Metonymy,
beyond Simile and Synecdoche,
beyond Prosody and Personification,

to developing discernment muscles,
to developing initiative,
to developing courage,
to developing creativity.

Cheap Innovation, Open Innovation, Research by Proxy

Open Innovation is a famous book, deservedly so.

And here is the story of The Double Helix. It's about how a young American -- 23 I think -- and a fellow British researcher, decoded DNA ahead of their rivals.

The young American was James Watson and the Brit was the 35 years old Francis Crick.

They were barred from doing their own experiments somehow. Anyway, they were behind their rivals in terms of data.

But they had a lot of experience in interpreting other people's data.

For instance, someone did an experiment, got some results, and published or presented his/her findings. Crick and Watson understood, or could explain the results better than the researcher who really undertook the experiment.

When you're lazy or late, you can often rely on their modus operandi.

Thinking Up New Products and Thesis Topics

on October 14,2011

1. Steve Jobs once said that he's proud of products that he had done and maybe even prouder of products that he had chosen not to do yet.
2. According to Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money, searching for business opportunities and great products is like mining: out of 10, you get 3, and out of those 3, you dig into 1.

1. Is thinking up new products tough?
2. Is thinking up thesis topics tough?

Thinking up thesis topics is(well, at least, was) easy.

Thinking up new products is even easier. Here's how:

1. In academic world, if Student Number 138765 has registered to do "Abraham Lincoln's Logistical Problems in the American Civil War," the prof won't allow me to do that.
   
   In real world, after Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and Google+,(if I chose,) I am still free to do MyFriendsterSpaceBook+, right?
   
   
2. In academic world, the devil is in the details.
   
   In real world, it is even more so. All Intuit founding team needed was the "47th mover's advantages." Then, Mint.com that Intuit bought out must have "57th mover's advantages."

Online banking, online teaching, social networking, job sites ... are all today's offerings 100% complete, perfect? All the necessary inventions have been done?

As Mr Henry Ford remarks, whatever you think is right.

Now, I am writing letters to Singapore software development companies, asking them to customize Moodle for independent private tutors.

Moodle is too good to be let go to waste. And it is easy to customize.

But then, the devil is in the details, and even more so in the software world.

Conceptual Blockbusting : A Book Review

I'm referring to Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide To Better Ideas by James L. Adams.

I have adapted the key ideas of the book to my audience here : primary and secondary or high school students.

Perceptual Blocks

1. Failure to see correctly the boundaries and constraints of the problem
2. Failure to use many different points of view

Emotional Blocks

1. Fear to take risks, make mistakes etc
2. Fear of chaos, ambiguity, messiness etc
3. Judging or analyzing too early, rather than generating ideas
4. Inability to relax and wait and trust the process

Intellectual Blocks

1. Inability to define and express a problem in many different ways, especially, in words, in numbers/formulas, or in picture/images/imagery etc

This is a wonderful book. Even our deliberately partial list will help solve 85% of your or your child's thinking and problem-solving hassle.

Inventing the Medium and Digital Innovation

In Inventing the Medium, the author states that the digital medium is different from other media in possessing the four affordances:

1. Procedural. The digital medium can execute conditional behaviors whereas other media cannot.
2. Participatory. The digital medium can "script both sides of interaction so that each's actions become meaningful to the other side."
3. Encyclopedic. The digital medium has huge memory storage like an encyclopedia.
4. Spatial. The digital medium's space is virtual and navigable.

She goes on to match various disciplines to each affordance.

1. procedural affordance with Computer Science
2. participatory affordance with HCI(Human Computer Interaction)
3. encyclopedic affordance with Information Science
4. spatial affordance with Visual Design

Then she goes on to map each affordance to a well-known web application or service.

1. procedural affordance with Google
2. participatory affordance with Flickr
3. encyclopedic affordance with Wiki
4. spatial affordance with I-cannot-see-clearly-what

This is impressive, the only trouble is that I don't understand all this well.

For me, the digital medium

1. can execute very complex instructions, steps, decisions etc. My chair, my doormat, even my TV cannot match this, not yet at least. (a) This is the ability to organize, mobilize, rally, orchestrate people at a distance. (b) This is the software agents' ability to decide on their own, or on behalf of other people or systems.(c) This is the robot's ability to sense its environment, to create it sown environment, to make sense of its environment etc.
2. can store lots of data and can search, retrieve, sort, and rearrange this data very well. My dictionaries, my book shelves, my encyclopedias cannot match this right now.
3. can represent space abstractly. My newspapers cannot grow larger and shrink smaller right now. Neither can my libraries, our football fields, or our local bazaars.

Will these 3 points, help me innovate in this medium better? You bet.

Digital Product Innovation,Academia,Grounded Innovation

Many people agree that Gorbachev as a professor can be cool but Gorbachev as a politician is disastrous.

Suppose I am a political science prof. I can invent a voting system such that

1. age 5-10        1/2 vote per person
2. age 11-20      1 vote per person
3. age 21-30      2 vote per person
4. age 31-40      3 vote per person
5. age 41-50      4 vote per person
6. age 51-above 1/2 vote per person

Yes, it's silly and impractical. But it will work in any classroom and in any academic journal. At least, it's "controversial," "radical," "innovative," "thought-provoking" etc.

Now, here comes a book on digital product innovation, Grounded Innovation Strategies for Creating Digital Products and the companion blog.

On Page 10, there are five properties that will be useful to explain digital products:

1. Information Processing: computation e.g very early mainframes
2. Interaction e.g. sketchpad, word processor
3. Networking e.g. Internet PC/laptop
4. Sensing e.g. Adidas, Nike
5. Proactivity : Machine deciding for itself e.g. Smart phone

First of all are these properties to distinguish digital products from non-digital ones, or to distinguish one digital product from other digital products?

e.g. My pencil doesn't have "Information Processing" capacity, but my PC does. But my door knobs and door buttons do interact with us.

Then, if all digital products have " Information Processing" power, why include it in the list?

Then, "Proactivity"? A Tumbling Kelly toy always returns to its original position. Is it deciding this for itself? Doesn't any PC/laptop, smart phone, digital product decide for themselves to a degree?

We can keep on asking. But that's enough. We are not doing an academic exercise here.

We will discuss later another book on digital products, Inventing The Medium. An MIT book, but no better.

New Software Product Development --- My Proofs - Part 1 of 100

A Hot Web Application

I happened to read a recent Life Hacker book and browsing its pages, found the following app.

Don't Break the Chain

The site describes the app as follows:

This is based upon a motivation technique purportedly used by Jerry Seinfeld. Read about it here. The Short Version:

1. Pick a goal.
2. Mark off the days on which you work toward that goal.
3. Use your chain of marked off days as a motivator.

You can read more about its inspiration at Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret and at Don’t Break the Chain - Jerry Seinfeld's Method for Creative Success

There are apps for different platforms too:  IPhone App ,  IPhone and iPad apps .

My Intent

The fact is I've watched all the 9 seasons of Jerry Seinfeld for a couple of times. So has my son.

1. I can get about 10 more apps from Seinfeld character.
2. I can get about 10 more apps from George Costanza character.
3. I can get about 10 more apps from Kramer character.
4. I can get about 5 more apps from Elaine Benes character.
5. I can get about 5 more apps from Newman character
6. and so on.

Maybe my son has some more apps different from mine.

1. And what about Charlie Chaplin?
2. And what about Buster Keaton ?
3. And what about Fatty Arbuckle?
4. And what about Jim Carrey?

And for that matter:

1. What about Clint Eastwood?
2. And what about Kung Fu series?
3. And what about Bond movies?
4. And what about Jackie Chan?
5. And what about ... ?
6. And what about ... ?
7. And what about ... ?

Such apps are small and therefore won't take too long to code.

If you have some time to spare, we want you to work with us.

Of course, we won't spend the rest of our life doing such small apps.

But before we do the next Google, the next Facebook, the next salesforce.com ... Insert any big and famous name here ... we want you to work with us.

Marathon Tyre Kicking and Insecurity

on January 8, 2012

From Dec 20 last year to Jan 7 this year I did a marathon of checking out various web frameworks. I burned both ends of the candle as well as the middle so long that the seasonal flu caught up with me. Still I kept on testing till my PC too went down.
It took me a couple of days to find and fit replacements for the PC. Then I went on with my testing. In a couple of hours with the revamped PC, I finished all testing.

I tested the following frameworks, across different languages, generations, paradigms, communal styles, and even across different philosophies:

1. Code Igniter 2.1.0


2. Yii 1.1.8


3. Rails 3.2.0


4. Sinatra + DataMapper


5. Django 1.3.1


6. Rails + DataMapper

These 2 to 3 weeks saved me a lot in terms of time, effort, and money.

Most important of all, it cures me of my insecurities-driven hunger for aa2d tools.

I am insecure, well, at least, most of the times or some of the times. It's hard for me to ignore or accept risks.

A Past Example

XSLT, XPath, bah, blah ........ and I got scared.
SOAP, Web Servies, WS-* bah, blah ........ and I got scared.
At that time, I studied half a dozen of such books and decided that I had no choice but to accept this risk of staying ignorant of such technologies. None of them become decisive competitive advantages. The RISKs I sadly accepted turned out to be no risks at all. Paper tigers? Smoke screens?

A Future Saving

I wanted to do DSL(domain-specific languages) very much. I still want to.

It will take at least a few years to do a DSL for any domain, say, public transport, health care, trading, education. It will take a genius like me ;-) to take on such a challenge.

Certain languages are provably better than others for doing DSL, say, C++ vs Python. So, with my insecurities, my chain of thoughts will go like this: "I cannot allow my competitors using Python doing DSL while I stick with C++ or VB. I must also use Python etc."

Relax in Peace

Now these 2 or 3 weeks' tests rid me of many such insecurities. I don't need to deny access or area to anyone.

The universe is too abundant for our own good! There have been and there will ever be a lot of self-defeating technologies, and a lot of useless inventions!

Yes, it is also full of life-saving technologies, customer-smiles-winning inventions too. It's 100% up to us. I want to save lives, to make customers smile, to keep them smiling, to comfort them, to help them sleep better, to change lives for the better, to reduce poverty, to make life more meaningful ... then I will keep finding tools for those ends.

Those who want to lock in customers, ransom them, torture them, out-wit them, play fast and loose with them .. too will find all the tools they need in this abundant universe.

Choose wisely and live happily, with or without any insecurity!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Fu Mingtain: Expand Your Focus to Strengths

Everyone is talking about Fu Mingtain these days in Singapore. What can she teach your kids?

Here are a few good things various people have talked about her.

1. She's tough.
2. Never say die.
3. She's a fighter, warrior.
4.“She has excellent fighting spirit and mental strength. She really deserves the gold medal,” said Singapore’s chef-de-mission, Dr Tan Eng Liang.

So, you can ask your kid to be tough, to never say die, to keep fighting against heavy odds, to be strong etc.
If your kid agrees, then you can stop reading this post right now.
If, the other hand, your kid hesitates, then please read on.

I am writing in my own words what I've read in the Straits Times.
She noticed that the home crowd cheered the other player and booed her.
Instead of taking this as intimidation, she interpreted this as more pressure piling upon her opponent.

Reframing! A more helpful point of view! A better perspective! (CBT! REBT! NLP! Don't worry about this alphabetic soup: concepts matter, terms don't.)
And therefore, more optimism, more courage.

The footballers who choke, collapse under pressure/expectations ...
Kids who get stomach upsets, emotional upsets near critical exams ...

They may not be able to toughen up in days, but they may be able to conjure up a nicer point of view in hours and get more courage in time.

Even the famous general US ("unconditional surrender") Grant overcame his fear with a spin on his perspective. More about this later.

I can't turn a chicken kid into an eagle in months. But I can help a chicken kid fly above eagles in hours. It's easy, isn't it? If I let it fly in a plane. (How about Cao Cao, Song Jiang, Mao, any under dog in history?)

A perspective is worth 80 IQ points, right?

November 23, 2011

User Experience and Product Development : Dreamer, Wisher Method --- Part 1

In a previous post, I have demonstrated how I am good at dreaming and my Walter Mitty- Dijkstra hybrid mode.

I think I am alright dreaming how a user would go through an imaginary application.

A few weeks back, I asked an online Singaporean programmers group to implement some features for an e-learning app. They responded saying my  feature cannot be "new." Then, I showed how "new" they could be, by asking this:

"OK. Find me something that looks like this.

It's free and online. 
I type main question, then choices, including if necessary, images too. 
 And the answer.
I can add as many question I like. 
I can print it out, and it comes out nicely. 
I can let my students practice there. 
There can be tip/hints for students. 
Answers are graded. 
I can edit them. 
I can download my question sets. They work offline too! 
I can go on, but this should be enough. 


This is 1 of 1000 things we can do for education/training etc. So I have 

no need to protect this. ...

Please don't mention SCORM, IMS, Moodle, Atutor, Coursera, hot potatoes, 

whatever.

If a nice thing is there, why would I code or ask others to code."

Yes, I have dreamed up dozens of apps. Each app can be divided up into dozen smaller apps.

Therefore, there is no need for me to protect, hide, hoard each micro/nano app.

I am willing share these dreams to willing hands and kindred spirits.

Innovation Seminar --- 4

1. Two persons, two different behaviors: both succeeded. Please check up Prince by Machiavelli or Thinking About Leadership.
2. You box the same way. George Foreman boxes the same way, but he thinks he'll win the bout. He even believe the older version of George Foreman will beat the younger version. Am I mad? Is he mad? Are you mad? Please check out By George. At least, you will learn how to face Joe Frazier, Smoking Joe, when your knees are shaking with fears. Just imagining makes my knees shake ;-|

Thus my first Innovation topic is

1. You must copy and 
2. You must not copy (esp. George Foreman, KKN and Machiavelli. Because the first has his own reasons, the last is half-fox and the second is just plain lucky. Lucky the way von Moltke would have it.)

Best of life to you all!