Category Archives: creativity

Quora – Why you need to be using this service

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What is Quora? It took a few hours for me to “get it”, but after reading around and having a play here’s where I’m at.

A global Q+A site that actually works!

Unlike Yahoo! Answers or LinkedIn’s Q+A, the hooks to other Social networks make this very easy to spread to your existing network.  Unlike Facebook Questions, the ability to search for, or ask questions is exceptionally easy.  If you have a burning question you cannot get answered anywhere else, try it! You will be impressed.

The Geek reaction is palpable

I found Techcrunch’s article by MG Seigler a little whacky when I first read it.  Claims like “Is Quora the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years?” are pretty strong.

It’s worth remembering Quora has been around for a few months, and has been steadily winning over sceptics, and beginning to form consensus.

Adam at Comms Corner makes the case for why brands need to get into the FAQ space, like they have done Social Media.

1) If you don’t someone else will answer questions on behalf of your brand – like the early days of Wikipedia.

2) This is a great way to find dissatisfied customers and help them get the best from your product.

Emergence of global, centralised tools & products

We now have Wikipedia (Encyclopaedia), Google (Search,Translate), Facebook (Social), Skype (Speak), Ebay (Marketplace) and many more tools where the world comes together on one platform.  They all benefit from the network effect.  They are made better by the fact that everyone uses them.  Delaying moving to these platforms, means you miss the party & miss the opportunity.

  • Have you used Quora?
  • Will you sign up?
  • Have you got any value from it?
  • Do you think it will become mainstream?

Headaches, Cure. Brilliant Ideas and Ketchup

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As with all my blogs, they start all friendly and end up with the bigger thoughts and ideas. It gets you in the mood for thinking though so it’s all good.

The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bee’s… I want chicken. That’s what I want.

There are few things as amazing as cooking for yourself, food your parents made as a treat when you were younger. This may sound a little trivial to some, but the sheer JOY I experienced cooking Birds Eye Crispy Chicken Dippers with Potato Waffles was only outdone by the JOY that followed when I ate them. I even used the spice mill thing to dip the chicken into ketchup. This is by no means the most nutritious or best meal ever… but it rocked my world.

Cream Eggs are nearly gone from our shelves for the rest of 2009. For some reason this year they got better than ever.

Now for the Brilliant bit
Thing’s I’ve been thinking about that would have been nice to have been taught:

  • lifehacker.com allows you to upgrade bits of your life. Really. Really really.
  • Creativity if channeled right is the most valuable asset you have.
  • Managing your finances means you get MORE MONEY.
  • There is nothing you can’t learn if you give it a shot at searching for it.
  • You’re not the first to struggle with something, humans can find help.
  • Life is more wonderful than it is cruel, the mix of the two makes life art.
  • Perfection is boring, don’t strive for it. Instead go for useful, or meaningful.
  • Humanity is broken and flawed, and that is precisely what makes it amazing.
  • There is no joy without failure.

Question: Would any of the above have meant so much to me if I HAD been taught them? Probably not. It is most likely the epic revelations I feel almost daily have been had by many, even hundreds of thousands, possibly a few million before me. I’m not special for finding out a litany of useful ways to get the best out of life. It does however feel like my goal is to somehow use it, and then spread it without sounding like the sources I learned from.

Lessons and learning has this whole dullness problem. Learning sounds like the most BORING use of a day ever. Yet how many people do you know who hated lessons in school who love a good nature documentary?

As another example, ever watched the tv shows you loved as a kid? Didn’t you feel a bit cheated when you realized how much they were teaching you. Yet at the time you loved it? Why…

Well this is the key to the whole blog post so of course I’m going to pad this out, and tease you a little first… Why did we love learning as kids? Why don’t we love learning now?

“Sy”, you reply poetically, “it was fun when we were kids”. Yes, yes it was. It also made you really happy. It was fun when you were younger because we as a species find joy in doing what is successful. It is at its very core a survival tool to enjoy what helps us survive. Dogs enjoy hunting training, cats too, hamsters really love running around a lot in a confined space…

How useful then; a species that finds joy in learning. Wouldn’t they become smart quickly compared to competing animals?

If you take a look at Stephen Fry, David Attenborough or even Jonathan Ross. What do they have in common? Their unquenchable thirst for new knowledge, media or art. The act of learning both keeps them young, whilst making us wiser.

Learning has an image problem which comes from how bad we are as a species at teaching. Instead of inspiring people to learn, we force “correctness” on them from our ivory tower of adulthood. School never stops, kids have kids who have kids. You only feel old when you stop loving life.

Knowledge used to be power, but now power comes from sharing knowledge and being a conduit for it. The internet means it’s getting harder and harder to hide, control and manage. Yet humanity left to its own devices with a big fat knowledge tool like the internet… Does pretty well. It was humanity that created Religion, then Governments, then The Slinky. Humanity left to its own devices elsewhere will create the most useful power structure for success in its environment. Not through individual intelligence, but through swarm intelligence.

The individual is smart, but it can be incorrect. An incorrect individual will eventually be exposed, and the swarm learns from it.

Making the internet the ultimate humanity swarm.

Nerd ADD.

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They say men can’t multi task, but do Nerds count as men? Tell me to rub my belly and pat my head & I’m already thinking about what’s for dinner and how to improve my gym work out.

The media age we live in, and its constant endless flow of information is too much for most of the population. So they end up with spyware riddled PCs suffering from winrot after a year, when all they did was surf for a little porn, and chat on facebook a bit. See most people look at the PC as a big fat phone. It is functional, but to Nerds? It’s a window into the bit of the brain our memory isn’t good enough to deal with.

What was that song I wanted to listen to? Oh yeah NP: Lamb of God – Reclamation.

rands explains it better.

Stop reading right now and take a look at your desktop. How many things are you doing right now in addition to reading this column? Me, I’ve got a terminal session open to a chat room, I’m listening to music, I’ve got Safari open with three tabs open where I’m watching Blogshares, tinkering with a web site, and looking at weekend movie returns. Not done yet. I’ve got iChat open, ESPN.COM is downloading sports new trailers in the background, and I’ve got two notepads open where I’m capturing random thoughts for later integration into various to do lists. Oh yeah, I’m writing this column, as well.

See, if I do the same task here is the answer. Two firefox windows. One has facebook, this blog, lifehacker, BBC News, a better writing article & rands in repose article. The other has a bunch of windows about java mobile application development. I can’t bring myself to close those, because they’re not quite worthy of bookmarking. I have my email inbox open, and tweetdeck feeding my live updates. uTorrent is downloading a few things, I have a log file with todays thoughts and ideas as well as winamp entertaining my ears.

The truth is, without those distractions, I don’t work as well & can’t get through any task. Sharing my time between each of them results in me hitting this zone where round pegs do your bidding and nestle right into that square hole. Good little round peg.