E-mail psychology

An interesting piece in the New York Times talks about how people may appear different over email compared to in person. I have found this to be largely true. Many times, emails are misinterpreted (emoticons notwithstanding)

I quote :

This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track.

Research by Jennifer Beer, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, finds that this face-to-face guidance system inhibits impulses for actions that would upset the other person or otherwise throw the interaction off. Neurological patients with a damaged orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to modulate the amygdala, a source of unruly impulses; like small children, they commit mortifying social gaffes like kissing a complete stranger, blithely unaware that they are doing anything untoward.

Socially artful responses emerge largely in the neural chatter between the orbitofrontal cortex and emotional centers like the amygdala that generate impulsivity. But the cortex needs social information — a change in tone of voice, say — to know how to select and channel our impulses. And in e-mail there are no channels for voice, facial expression or other cues from the person who will receive what we say.

End quote.

So it makes it all the more important to write with precise grammar, punctuations and prose to get now only the message, but also the tone and therefore the main focus of an email across to your recipient.

This post is directed to people who insist on talking like 'Need 2 spk 2 u... wan 2 b ur frnd... wat do u say'. No one likes to read literally stunted communication like that except on a cellphone screen. Please don't write like that to me.

How do you shower?

Another hilarious video. Man, is blogging easy or what ?? ;)

How To Shower - Men & Women - Click here for the most popular videos

Another funny Mac-PC ad spoof

The problem at YouTube is its hard to stop at just one.

Funniest iPhone video ever!

A friend of mine just gave me the YouTube link. Been laughing ever since.

What drives you?

This question arises from a more basic question that a lot of people, including my wife, have asked me numerous times- Why do you work on weekends? Lets put this entry in perspective- its a clear Saturday afternoon in New York. I am in lab where my samples are incubating. This post is to justify my work and habits to myself. That and I have also started touch-typing recently so I won't waste a lot of time on this verbose piece.

I don't really have a 'real job'. I don't get up in the morning, take a train somewhere to hunch in front of a glowing screen or sell things to people. Unfortunately, I also don't make money like the people in the previous sentence. I have to make do on a meager stipend, which if you calculate the amount of hours I put in, falls way below minimum wage stipulations.

What drives me?

Your work takes up most of your days. For most (sane) people, the purpose of work is to earn money to improve the quality of the other part of their life. For me, the quality of my other (non-working) life is improved not by material things (gadgets are a BIG exception- they increase productivity!) but by knowledge about myself. I don't like to call what I do work at all. I think of and chase an idea. To find out a very tiny piece of the puzzle of how nature works. Sometimes the idea works. Most times it doesn't. More than figuring out the answer to the puzzle that will eventually (and hopefully) become my graduate thesis, I get my reward in finding out how much I, alone, can accomplish in the given state of affairs. How can I ask a better question? How can I set up an experiment that will answer a series of questions with least assumptions and no loose ends? How do I prove or disprove something that I think about a (any) system? At the end of the day, did my approach work? If I don't see what I expect, what do I see and how can I fit the data in the broad scheme of things? How do I bounce back from failure? How do I deal with people who want to help me and those who want to tear me down? How do I maintain a healthy level of dispassion from my work so that I don't go crazy and drive people around me crazy? I find answers to THESE questions everyday. And every question I ask is better than the previous one. That is my reward.

I am in a race. A race to find out something about a system that competitors and companies with more people and money are working on too. Will I get discouraged and settle for a lesser question? What about the Kenyan marathon runner who outruns his more healthy eating, sophisticated-equipment trained and cash rich American competitor? The power lies in ideas and attitudes, not brute force numbers. Coming back to the need for working on weekends. A person working weekends works around 25% more than a person who does not. Have you ever heard of a race where one team has a 25% lead on another?

There- typed all that in 16 minutes. Still have 14 minutes to spare.

Moral of the post- find out what really drives you and do that. You will be able to deal with everything around you much better.

The ultimate phone (as of today)

Move over Apple iPhone droolers. The most technologically advanced, feature rich, slick phone is now available for interested people- mostly for the gadget obssessed and independently wealthy.

Its called the Eten Glofish M700. Eten is a Taiwanese high-end consumer electronics maker. The specs of the phone reads like every gadget geeks dream:

1. Quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900: meaning you could use it on any GSM network in the USA, Europe and Asia.
2. 2.8" TFT touch screen display 240x320 pixels, handwriting recognition and a sliding QWERTY keyboard. This is a huge deal because you can comfortably and quickly type on this phone.
3. Wi-Fi, GPS (SiRF StarIII chip). This is is coolest feature. This phone not only has Wi-Fi internet so that you can get onto wireless networks without paying an arm and a leg to your cellphone service provider, BUT the phone is also a GPS device. You can use it for GPS navigation while driving or use it as a handheld GPS device when you are hiking or meeting friends in that obscure cafe in the east village in Manhattan. GPS is the best feature a cellphone can have. Think about it, you can never get lost!
4. Windows Mobile 5 OS, Bluetooth, GPRS, 2MP camera, music player, FM radio, Micro SD expansion.... all the yadda yadda that every phone has these days.

Now for the price. At $612 (cheapest online price), its not a cheap phone. But given that a GPS device is around $200 at least, and iPod is another $200, that's $400 just for those features. So a Windows smart phone for $212 isn't a bad deal.

Compare the above to the iPhone which has approximately a 50% profit margin per phone. It has no keyboard (typing on a touchscreen, even with handwriting recognition is HORRIBLE! Trust me, I have a Tablet PC), no storage expansion, no replaceable battery, no GPS and a hefty service plan charge from Cingular per month. All this for $600. And available in June 2007. LG is already set to launch their touch screen phone, very similar to Apple's next month.

If you are saving up for the ultimate phone, look no further than the Eten M700. I have already started checking my bank balance for possible ways to bounce back after the purchase.

iTired?

So the consensus amongst techies seems to be that the iPhone won't do well when its released later this year.

The iPod and the first macintosh were unlike any other device in terms of function when they were released. This is why people flocked to a new and cool thing. There are many devices that do well what the iPhone claims to do. Add low memory, battery life and high cost and you see the problem. The limit as to why you can't do 50 different things on your cellphone is the battery life of your cellphone. If your iPod or Palm battery runs out, not a big deal. If your cellphone battery runs out- problem. The final killer is that you will not be able to replace the battery on your own- you have to ship it to Apple. Wow. Remember the Moto Rokr phone? Was launched at the first phone with integrated iTunes (512 mb) with much fanfare 2 years ago? Didn't think so.

That hasn't stopped a funny piece by Craig Ferguson (love his accent) on CBS. Enjoy-