eSwarm

eSwarm

"Buyers register for a free account then join current swarms (groups of buyers) or create new ones. Swarms can be focused on any consumer good, debt refinancing, pre-paid gift and debit cards and even insurance products. Sellers then bid for the business." - http://www.techcrunch.com/

That is a very neat idea. The reason larger buyers (like Government, Military, large corporations) get better deals on things like insurance, etc. is because of their volumes. While a single customer might not matter much, as a big group, they have the power to negotiate, strike a better deal and change the whole market dynamics.

I will be eagerly waiting to see how this site evolves. I am surprised eBay and Craigslist are not providing this kind of service. It seems this type of business model would be right up their alley.

Couple of things:
1. Searching for 'Hybrid 19" bike' on google should show a link 'Join the swarm' specific for this product.
2. Instead of businesses just bidding on the price, they should be allowed to offer additional services, or freebies. And the swarm could possibly vote on the offers and select the best offer.

Hike - Point Reyes - Arch Rock

Yesterday, a friend of mine and I went on this hike. It is an easy trail with a total walking distance of 8.2 miles. Took us exactly 4 hours. We dint rush and it was a pleasant trail with lot of greenery. Initially the trail was crowded but as we got farther from the start, there was almost no one we could see. At the end of the trail is a cliff with some very great views of the pacific.

From the NPS site: ARCH ROCK via BEAR VALLEY (13.1 km / 8.2 mi.)
Probably the single most popular trail in the park, the Bear Valley Trail is the most direct walk to the ocean from the Bear Valley Visitor Center. This pleasant stroll through mixed Douglas fir forest and along Bear Valley Creek is sheltered from sun, wind and coastal fog. Arch Rock is an overlook point with no beach access.Begin at the Bear Valley Trailhead, at the south end of the Bear Valley Parking Lot.

fat

why is it so easy to gain weight while so difficult to lose?

Because our body is one giant magnet for bad, unhealthy food.

Update:
"If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is "socially contagious" and can spread easily from person to person."

Ref: San Diego researchers find obesity can spread in social circles

Does it mean we will have to disown all friends/family above a certain BMI to lose weight?
The study says no: "Despite their findings, the researchers said people should not sever their relationships."

Testing direct blog from Picasa

Tried to post directly from inside Picasa inside my desktop and seeing how it turn out.

Btw, this was taken from the Marin Highlands, one of my favorite spots in the Bay Area. The view of the Golden Gate, the city and the Pacific is terrific from here.

Hike - Joaquin Miller Park

This morning, with nothing much to do, I decided to go on a hike at the nearby Joaquin Miller Park here in Oakland, CA. While not as beautiful as the John Muir hike trails (in Marin County), I really enjoyed it here for the quietness in spite of being inside the city of Oakland, lack of many hikers (probably met like 4 hikers and 3 bikers in total), and most importantly - this park requires dogs to be on leashes.

More information on this park and the hikes here are available on this page.

earth quake

USGS Report
SF Chronicle report

I have been through a couple of earth quakes but nothing rattled me like the one this morning at 4:42AM (Ritcher: 4.2). Even though it was classified as a light quake, it scared the shit out of me. One of the picture frames in my house with a glass covering feel on a wooden plank below and broke. There was this thud noise with the building shaking that woke me up. Hearing all these, my first reaction was there is a burglar in my balcony who jumped from the apartment above. Then within a few minutes, I realized it was an earthquake. Looks like this was one of the strongest in recent times here in the Bay Area:
"Anytime the earth moves beneath you it's a little unsettling, no matter who you are," said USGS seismologist Rufus Catchings, who felt the temblor. "This is the biggest (quake) we've had in a while."

Made to Stick

Ideas are dime a dozen. What really makes money are not ideas, but actually following up on the idea, implementing it the right way at the right time. At the same time, for ideas to be accepted among the masses, and stick for eternity, it needs to be marketed. How to do that? Thats what this book "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is about. A book that treats ideas like how I would deal with an analytical problem. Look at how historically popular ideas have stuck with people. Look at the characteristics of those ideas and in how they were communicated and pull out the commonality and distill them down to the variables: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional and stories.

Here is one example from the book on unexpectedness:

Assignment to a journalism class: Write a lead for the following facts: Next Thursday, the entire faculty will go to Sacramento for a teacher's conference. Speakers at the conference include college president, leading anthropologist, state governor etc.

Students came with leads like "Staff to attend conference in ..."

Then the teacher revealed her choice: "There will be no school next Thursday."
The message, news is supposed to convey what matters and why it matters, not what where etc. stuck with the students forever after this assignment.

The book is filled with examples like this, explaining the importance of packaging ideas so that people get it, remember it and make use of it. Its a great read.

Amazon.com: Average Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 95

SF snaps

www.flickr.com More of dnara_fp's photos

spaghetti sauce

http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/20

Malcolm Gladwell has this very interesting article/talk on how to come up with a product that people will truly like. He echoes my point about people not knowing what they like. At least, they dont articulate what they like. Could be because they don't want to reveal what they really like, or simply their mind does not know what their tongue likes. What people want cannot be known by just asking them what they want. If that was possible, we would not need designers, just builders would suffice.

Malcolm talks about the brilliance of Howard Moskowitz: "working with the Campbell's kitchens, he came up with forty-five varieties of spaghetti sauce. These were designed to differ in every conceivable way: spiciness, sweetness, tartness, saltiness, thickness, aroma, mouth feel, cost of ingredients, and so forth. He had a trained panel of food tasters analyze each of those varieties in depth. Then he took the prototypes on the road—to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville—and asked people in groups of twenty-five to eat between eight and ten small bowls of different spaghetti sauces over two hours and rate them on a scale of one to a hundred. When Moskowitz charted the results, he saw that everyone had a slightly different definition of what a perfect spaghetti sauce tasted like. If you sifted carefully through the data, though, you could find patterns, and Moskowitz learned that most people's preferences fell into one of three broad groups: plain, spicy, and extra-chunky, and of those three the last was the most important. Why? Because at the time there was no extra-chunky spaghetti sauce in the supermarket. Over the next decade, that new category proved to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Prego. "

Here is a guy who dint go blindly by the data. He dint go by what the experts told him were likely to be preferred by people. He dint go by what people said they liked. He designed an experiment , and used the results from the experiment to come to a correct conclusion. It is very easy to come up with data to support a particular hypothesis and then once the hypothesis fails, seek cover under that very same data - "but the data pointed out this". Smart people, instead, know to ask the right questions and derive inferences from the answers.